This project is improving undergraduate STEM education through the creation of new learning materials, developing faculty expertise, implementing educational innovations, and assessing student learning of science within ethnobotany courses.
Ethnobotany is the study of interactions between people and plants. Examples include improved understandings of complex and statistically-testable cultural phenomena such as competition for natural resources, selection of diets, and differences in cultural practices. The combination of natural and social science investigative techniques it embodies address problems that are relevant to most students.
The B.S. degree in Ethnobotany at the University of Hawai'i (UH) provides the context for development of a culturally-relevant curriculum. The introductory course has the second highest enrollment of any course in the biological sciences (behind non-majors biology). The project is based upon two simple observations about students currently in the ethnobotany courses on the UH campus: 1) Many non-science majors at the (UH) are attracted to courses in ethnobotany because they are seen as being interesting or culturally relevant. 2) Students become interested in science because of what they learn in ethnobotany and transfer into science majors and careers.
The project is improving the quality of the content of a number of ethnobotany courses and is developing natural transition points (segues) from ethnobotany into other sciences to assist student transitions. It is transforming the teaching of ethnobotany from an approach that is largely descriptive to one that focuses on hypothesis-driven research intended to address important problems and develop theories. It directly relates STEM skills developed in ethnobotany courses to their counterparts in parallel sciences such as biology, chemistry, nutrition, and pharmacology. As a result, large numbers of students are learning about methods and theories involving cultural and biological diversity, conservation, and related issues. Since ethnobotany is an emerging discipline around the nation, a network of instructors is being developed that will serve to provide input and feedback on the developing ethnobotany curriculum in Hawai'i and will facilitate wide distribution of lessons learned in this project.
The broader impacts of this project are the creation of new portals for young people to learn about science and consider science careers and the network of faculty involved in distributing the curriculum being developed and the lessons learned from development of the project to other U.S. institutions for implementation.
The intellectual merits of the proposed project center on development of: 1) pedagogical changes that honor cultural knowledge thus appealing to minority students who often see science as something alien to their heritage; and 2) scientific activities that are particularly relevant to field research and promote the successful transition of students into other science courses.
