wegnerk's blog
High School Interns and Site Visit
Wow, what a couple of weeks! All of the high school interns have arrived and they have begun work on their projects. I'm really pleased and impressed with how they just got down to business!
Welcome
Monica
Matt
Khalilha
Peter
Lei Moria
Jessica
It is Friday night after the Site Visit, and I think it went really well. I'm proud to have such amazing colleagues at OHSU, OSU, UW, and our other partner institutions. I appreciated how well everyone worked together, and send a big Thank You to all!
Recent K-12 Developments
1. At the end of January a proposal was submitted to NSF under a DRK-12 RFP. The proposal is titled, “Yakama Nation Longitudinal Study of Embedding Culturally Based Curriculum and Pedagogy in Science Education,” the lead institution is the Northwest Regional Education Laboratory. Partners are: the Yakama Nation, a sovereign tribal entity located in Washington state; school districts on the Yakama Reservation; Heritage University; Puget Sound Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology; and CMOP. Wegner is a CoPI
Project Summary
This is a full DRK–12 research and development proposal focusing on the Frontier Challenge A: How can all students be assured the opportunity to learn significant STEM content? The project develops a process for embedding culturally based education (CBE) resources into NSF-funded science curricular materials for use on the Yakama Indian Reservation in Yakima, Washington, and studies its influence on student learning. This proposal seeks to test the hypothesis that all high school students (Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo) benefit from being taught science using curricular materials and pedagogical strategies that connect science content and indigenous cultural values and history. Specifically, Yakama Nation cultural heritage will be infused into coursework, fieldwork, and mentor relationships to increase students’ involvement in science as demonstrated by improved success in science coursework, more rigorous course-taking patterns, and greater self-efficacy as science learners. This approach to science education will create an environment that encourages students, especially Native Americans, to complete high school and pursue postsecondary science education and STEM-related career paths. This project involves the participation of three schools all on the Yakama Reservation: one a small tribal school; a second predominantly Native American; and the third predominantly Hispanic. The project context provides a natural experiment in which the intervention can be examined longitudinally across three different ethnic groups (Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo).