This award provides funding for a three year continuing award to support a Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering Site program at the University of Kansas, entitled, "RET Site: Bioengineering Toolkits for 4th Grade Teachers (BET 4Teachers)", under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth A. Friis.
This RET in Engineering Site will bring together bioengineering faculty and graduate students from the University of Kansas to partner with the Greenbush, Kansas Southeast Kansas Education Service Center to provide research experiences in bioengineering for a total of eighteen 4th and 5th grade elementary teachers and development of teachers toolkits for use in their classrooms.
"BET 4 Teachers" was funded as an RET Site beginning Sept. 1, 2008. It was a collaborative effort between the University of Kansas (KU) Bioengineering program and Greenbush (Southeast Kansas Education Service Center-Greenbush), a K-12 science education resource. The RET site focused on pairing 4th and 5th grade science teachers with university faculty members and graduate students to work on existing bioengineering research projects and translate the fundamental bioengineering concepts into interactive toolkit lesson plans, while still meeting state and national education standards. Bioengineering has one of the highest levels of enrollment by females and minorities at all levels of education and in the workforce. The hypothesis of this RET site was that this exposure to bioengineering at the 4th and 5th grade levels will positively impact students’ self-perception before they have had time to adopt the negative stereotypic descriptions of scientists and engineers. The program was designed to encourage girls and minority students to see themselves in the role of an engineer and thus help to retain their interest in science and engineering through these formative years. We believe that this influence at the critical age will carry through the students’ academic career and make both female and male students more likely to pursue careers in engineering or science, regardless of the discipline. The BET 4 Teachers RET site has been through three summers of RET teacher participants working in the KU bioengineering research laboratories and developing lesson plans based on the research project on which they worked. Six 4th and 5th grade science teachers were recruited each year in Summers 2009-2011. Teachers were recruited from schools with a relatively wide range of socioeconomic levels and geographic distribution of over 300 miles. Teachers represented schools with averages of students with free and reduced lunches ranging from 5 to 64% (average and standard deviation 39 +/-18%). Nineteen lesson plans were developed by fifteen teachers (three repeat year teachers) over three summers. One ethics module was developed by input from all teachers. These lessons plans are being prepared for submission to the website, TeachEngineering.org. Outcome assessment from teachers collected before and after the research experience showed significant increases in understanding of engineering in general and specifically the research topics on which the teacher worked as well as those on which their colleagues worked. All teachers implemented their toolkits in their classrooms in the academic year. Pre- and post-outcome student assessments showed significant student learning about engineering and an increase in positive attitude about learning. Greenbush has developed several lesson plans into four-hour modules that they teach both on-site in their main lab facility and via IDL (Internet Distance Learning) to schools with whom they have partnerships. These bioengineering modules have been taught to over 2,500 children over the three years of the RET site. Each student was surveyed before and after the laboratory experience. Pre-assessment scores averaged 46 percent and post-assessment scores averaged 84 percent. This outcome is sustainable and will only grow as the IDL use increases.
