Newswise — PHILADELPHIA – A five-year evaluation involving nearly 20,000 kindergarten through 12th grade under-resourced public school students shows that taking part in Project BioEYES, with one center based in Philadelphia at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, increases students’ science knowledge and positive attitudes about science. Younger students had the greatest attitude changes. The study covered five years and tested students before and after the one-week BioEYES program. The research is published in PLOS Biology.
BioEYES uses live zebrafish to teach basic scientific principles, animal development, and genetics. The zebrafish embryo is clear, making it ideal for observations. As of spring 2016, 100,000 students and 1,400 teachers in six states and two countries have participated in the week-long program. Each BioEYES Center, including programs at Penn, Carnegie Institution, and the University of Utah or Monash University in Australia, is a partnership between local educators, school districts, and researchers.
First author Jamie Shuda, EdD, director of Outreach and Education at Penn’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and senior author Steve Farber, PhD, from the Carnegie Institution in Baltimore, started BioEYES as a grass-roots collaboration between a scientist and teacher. “We share a vision of providing high quality science experiences for all students and building sustainable teacher partnerships,” Shuda said. “We expected the students to increase their understanding of the concepts they learned, but what is most promising is the positive increases in their attitudes towards the practice of science.”
Over the course of a week, students collect zebrafish embryos and watch them develop from a single cell to a swimming larva, with a beating heart and a distinct pigmentation pattern. Elementary students learn about human and fish anatomy, habitats, cells, and DNA. Middle school students identify the observable traits of their zebrafish offspring, while high school students delve into the ways modern scientists determine the genetic makeup of parents by studying their offspring. At week’s end, students analyze these data and discuss their results with their classmates much the way scientists do.
From 2010 to 2015, the team assessed students before and after a week-long experiment. They asked students to answer knowledge-based questions as well as questions about their attitudes toward science and scientific careers. Following a BioEYES class, all grade levels showed significant positive gains in learning. Seven of the eight knowledge questions had significant positive gains for elementary students. At the middle school level, eight of the nine knowledge questions had significant positive gains. For example, students are asked about basic science concepts focused on cell biology, genetics, and how to develop a hypothesis. Some middle school questions that showed the greatest gains involved concepts in genetics, with changes from 72 to 87 percent, depending on the question. For example, students were asked to identify a Punnett Square based on the next generation cross of their offspring. The high school questions with the greatest gains were those identifying characteristics of model organisms in research such as having DNA and providing insight into human health, with a 64 percent change, and a basic understanding of stem cells, with a 56 percent change.
Interestingly, for all grade levels BioEYES increased students’ ability to imagine themselves as scientists. The largest effect on attitudes occurred at the elementary school level – six out of eleven statements showed significant positive changes. Among all grade levels, the strongest attitude shift was in the statement, “I know what it’s like to be a scientist.”
The second-largest attitude change was observed in elementary and high school grades, and the third-largest in middle school, was an increase in agreement with the statement, “Science is becoming more popular than it used to be.”
The work of BioEYES, locally and nationally, is supported by many foundations, corporations, and individuals (see S10 Table in the original paper for a comprehensive list of corporate and nonprofit support). The Penn BioEYES program that serves the Philadelphia area is supported by the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Spain, The Brook J. Lenfest Foundation, Children Can Shape the Future, The Scholler Foundation, and The Seybert Foundation.
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