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Projects of Interest to High School Teachers and Children

Addiction Research and Investigation for Science Educators (ARISE)

Product to be Developed: a one week summer program followed by a year-long program in which science teachers learn science, and pedagogical skills as well as develop laboratory-based lessons in neuroscience structured to reach English Learners

Goal: This ongoing project targets teachers of English language learners in grades 7-12 to assist them in improving science achievement. English learners are students who report a primary language other than English and who have been determined to lack the clearly defined English language skills necessary to succeed in regular instruction programs. The number of English learners in the US has increased dramatically between 1970 (8.5% English Learners) and 2004 (18.5% English Learners). In California, 33% of children ages 5-17 speak Spanish as their primary language and another 8% speak languages other than English. This program will target science teachers who currently lack pedagogical strategies and materials that would assist them in teaching science to English learners. It will use drug abuse and addiction as an interest approach to improve the ability of teachers to implement research-based strategies that enable English Learners to master science content. It will do this through a summer training program followed by a year-long program for teachers in which they will not only learn the science, but will also develop lab-based lessons specifically targeted for English Learners. In addition, the teachers will be partnered with researchers as they progress through the program. This program will provide culturally appropriate materials and pedagogical approaches for teaching English Learners who speak Spanish, Vietnamese, Hmong, Punjabi and Khmer.

Alignment with Standards: California and National Science Education Standards

Contact: Adela de la Torre, Ph.D.
University of California, Davis
adelatorre@ucdavis.edu

Changing Brains Through Inquiry, NOT Drugs (stimulus funding)

Product to be Developed: a model inquiry-based neuroscience education program on the biological basis of drug abuse

Goal: This program will develop, implement, evaluate, and disseminate a model inquiry-based neuroscience education program on the biological basis of drug abuse. It will result in the implementation of in-depth, inquiry-based curriculum materials and teacher training programs, supported by an online mentoring network, which will promote enhanced understanding and application of neuroscience and the biology of drug abuse into the secondary science curriculum. The program will be based on a previous project, BrainU (Brain Science on the Move) which was developed for 5-8th grade science teachers. This highly successful program will be expanded and transitioned into a permanent formal training program for secondary science educators to provide accurate neuroscience and drug abuse information to teachers and their students. The project will also conduct a study of the effectiveness and impact of very short vs long professional development experiences and the efficacy of web-based vs personal follow-up support.

Alignment with Standards: National Science Education Standards

Awards:

  • 2011 Distinguished Teaching Award in Postbaccalaureate, Professional and Graduate Education for the University of Minnesota – Awarded to Janet Dubinsky, Ph.D. for the development of BrainU funded through SEDAPA and SEPA grants.

Contact: Janet Dubinsky, Ph.D.
University of Minnesota
dubin001@umn.edu

Drugs: Integrating High School Biology and Chemistry

Product Developed: a series of curriculum modules on drug abuse, including a set of learning objectives, an inquiry-directed student handout, a teacher's guide, a glossary, a resource list and student hands-on activities and assessment strategies.

Target Audience: high school students and their teachers

Goal: These materials are designed to help high school students integrate what they have learned in biology and chemistry using pharmacology, particularly the pharmacology of abused drug. They also include related subjects, such as public policy, psychology and social sciences. Alignment with Standards: National Science Education Standards

Availability: The materials are available in both paper format and on the web (www.thepepproject.net).

Papers and Presentations:

  • Integration of Pharmacology Topics in High School Biology and Chemistry Classes Improves Performance, Schwartz-Bloom R. & Halpin, M. (2003). Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40, No. 9, 922-938.
  • The Pharmacology Education Partnership: Improving high school biology and chemistry, Schwartz-Bloom & Halpin (2004). Proceedings of the Conference on K-12 Outreach from University Science Departments.
  • Science Education: A Neuroscientists View of Translational Medicine, Schwartz-Bloom, RD (2005). Journal of Neuroscience 25:5667-5669. Online at: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/24/5667.full.pdf+html
  • Pharmacology Topics Help High School Students Learn Basic Principles of Biology and Chemistry, Halpin, MJ., et al. (2005) The Science Teacher 72:48-51.
  • Pharmacology in the High School Classroom, Kwiek, NC, et al. (2007). Science: 317:1871-1872. Online at: http://www.rise.duke.edu/download/Kwiek%20et%20al_Science_1.pdf (PDF, 877KB)
  • Teaching High School Chemistry in the Context of Pharmacology Helps Both Teachers and Students Learn. Schwartz-Bloom, et al., (2011) Journal of Chemical Education (in press).

Contact: The Pharmacology Education Partnership
Rochelle Schwartz-Bloom, Ph.D.
Duke University
schwa001@duke.edu

Exploring Drug Abuse Through the Science of Epidemiology

Product Developed: a curriculum that is exploring drug abuse issues relevant to high school students through the science of epidemiology

Target Audience: high school students and their teachers

Goal: This grant developed a curriculum focused on teaching drug abuse within the context of epidemiology while engaging the high school students in complex questions. Teachers have recognized the value of epidemiology for empowering students to make more informed health decisions, increasing students' media literacy and their understanding of public health messages, increasing students' understanding of the basis for determining risk, improving students' mathematical and scientific literacy, and expanding students' understanding of scientific methods and developing their critical thinking skills. These coupled with the need to teach drug abuse education, opens the possibility for a new innovative curriculum that teaches drug abuse in a unique fashion.

Alignment with Standards: National Science Education Standards

Availability: The curriculum is available on the web.

Contact: Mark Kaelin, Ph.D.
Montclair State University
kaelinm@mail.montclair.edu

Genetics of Addiction Program

Product Developed: The New Science of Addiction: Genetics and the Brain web based curriculum supplement for enhancing teacher and student understanding of the neurobiology and genetics of addiction

Target Audience: high school students and teachers Goal: This web site is designed for use in courses such as Biology or Anatomy and Physiology, with the goal of improving knowledge about genetics and its role in addiction. In developing these materials, Dr. Stark used a novel approach to web-based educational materials, Exploragraphic Web Design, a web program that optimally utilizes the Internet as a learning environment and provides multiple levels of information, facilitating differentiated learning.

Alignment with Standards: National Science Education Standards

Availability: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/drugs/mouse.html
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/
http://teach.genetics.utah.edu/content/ - The New Science of Addiction – teacher materials

Awards:

  • Science/AAAS: Science Prize for Online Resources in Education for the Learn.Genetics and Teach.Genetics websites (January 2010)

Papers:

  • Stark, LA and Pompei K (2010) Making genetics easy to understand. Science, 327:538-539

Contact: Louisa Stark, Ph.D.
University of Utah
lstark@genetics.utah.edu

ONE-DA – Online Neuroscience Education about Drug Addiction

Product to be Developed: a comprehensive sustainable university level online biology course that focuses on the biology of addiction and drug abuse for high school students; professional development for high school teachers on addiction biology

Target Audience: high school students and their teachers

Goal: This ongoing project will develop a comprehensive online Biology100-Biology of Addiction course for third and fourth year high school students that will be taught at a college-level. The course will teach biology concepts that the students need to learn but will do so using drug addiction as the main topic. It will incorporate state of the art technology and instructional practices by promoting school districts’ capacity for high quality online teaching and learning – an educational need that has been expressed by many school districts that want to align with young people’s interest in online environments. Teachers and students will be connected with University of Washington faculty and current research in the neurobiology of addiction. Plans for sustainability are robust and include dissemination through the University of Washington in the High School program which for over 26 years has successfully brought college level courses to high schools throughout Washington State.

Contact: Susanna Cunningham, Ph.D.
University of Washington
susannac@u.washington.edu

Problem-Based Learning for Drug Abuse and Addiction Education (stimulus funding)

Product to be Developed: an innovative curriculum on drug abuse and addiction for high school biology courses

Goal: This project will develop a curriculum on the biology of drug abuse and addiction and a professional development training model for effectively disseminating the curriculum and promoting its adoption by teachers. The curriculum will be problem-based with related instructional resources to model how research-based instructional strategies can be applied to teaching the biology of drug abuse and addiction. The curriculum will include biology topics that the students must learn incorporated into a drug abuse topic. It will include laboratory activities and computer-based resources that can easily be incorporated into a district’s existing high school science curriculum. The curriculum modules will align with New York State’s Math, Science and Technology Learning Standards and with the National Science Education Standards.

Contact: Dina Markowitz, Ph.D.
University of Rochester
dina_markowitz@urmc.rochester.edu

Science Education in Health Ed Class: Tobacco and Addiction

Product to be Developed: A science education-based module on tobacco products and nicotine addiction for the high school health education course for increasing science literacy and helping students make healthy decisions

Target Audience: high school students and teachers

Goal: This project seeks to increase science literacy of adolescents on the topic of tobacco use and nicotine, provide students with tools to resist the creative marketing of alternative tobacco products, and help students make appropriate decisions about (not) smoking or using other tobacco products that carry implied claims of being "safer" than regular cigarettes. A module on tobacco will be developed for use in health education classes. In addiction professional development will be provided to health education teachers to help them serve as learning facilitators of the science education module.

Alignment with Standards: National Science Education Standards

Contact: Rochelle Schwartz-Bloom, Ph.D.
Duke University
schwa001@duke.edu

Starnet - Research Experiences for Students and Teachers (Authentic Research for High School Students)

Product Developed: authentic scientific research program for high school biology teachers and their students

Target Audience: high school biology students

Goal: This grant involved students in authentic research by having them sequence a portion of a gene involved in nicotine metabolism. In addition, teachers received one week of professional development to prepare them to lead students in learning about the biology of drug abuse and how DNA sequencing contributes to our understanding of it.

Alignment with Standards: National Science Education Standards

Contact: Deborah Nickerson, Ph.D.
University of Washington
debnick@u.washington.edu

Starnet - Research Experiences for Students and Teachers (New Curricula for High School Students)

Product Developed: materials that guide students through designing and implementing a case control study of genetic and environmental factors involved in smoking behavior

Target Audience: high school students and their teachers

Goal: Through this project, teachers, scientists, and ethicists developed curriculum materials that build student understanding of public health issues related to tobacco use and how to design a research study using human subjects. The materials include a classroom-friendly genotyping protocol that can easily be incorporated into classrooms across the U.S. Through this project students had the opportunity to design a questionnaire to collect information about subjects' environment and smoking behavior, genotype subjects at genetic loci implicated in smoking behavior, and analyze data collected, as well as consider ethical issues related to research.

Alignment with Standards: National Science Education Standards

Contact: Deborah Nickerson, Ph.D.
University of Washington
debnick@u.washington.edu

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    Featured Publication

    Mentoring, A Guide for Drug Abuse Researchers publication cover

    Mentoring: A Guide for Drug Abuse Researchers

    Discusses the importance of quality mentorship in drug abuse research and offers suggestions for creating a successful mentor and mentee relationship.