Grant # R25 OD020207

This program is funded by a Science Education Partnership Award from the National Institutes of Health.

The scope of the SEPA program is to support the development and study of model biomedical science partnerships that focus on health-related sciences to broaden participation is related careers.

Through this award we focused our attention on training science teachers across the country, the vast majority of whom have had no prior exposure to biomedical or health related of material. To accomplish this, we refined our Modeling For Fidelity approach to reach teachers at scale and without geographic limits to ensure that they have the necessary knowledge of the content and curricular approaches.  We did this by combining educative materials such as lesson plans with contextualized content and videos, professional development (in-person, online, hybrid, synchronous, and asynchronous) and remote just-in-time teacher support during implementation. The ultimate goal was to use this intensive teacher support program to enable teachers to educate a health literate citizenry able to make lifestyle choices. The specific project goals were to:

Goal 1: Refine the GD curriculum to help students: (1.1) deal with challenging concepts by modifying the student workbooks to function in ‘flipped-classroom’ format aided by scientist input (1.2) think critically about authentic science practice with interrupted case studies, and also to enable teachers (1.3) to identify valid new material and adapt lessons to keep the curriculum up to date.

Goal 2: Promote dissemination of health-science related topics into the classroom via partnership with a major STEM education provider in Massachusetts, Bridgewater State University, to design and implement (2.1) a graduate-level course for pre-service teachers (2.2) a graduate level course for in-service teachers in combination with the Modeling for Fidelity (MFF) mentorship program as they implement the curriculum.

Goal 3: To promote dissemination of The Great Diseases and the MFF mentor program nationwide by (3.1) migrating the GD curriculum and MFF mentorship program to a web-based platform that can concurrently handle asynchronous online learning about content and synchronous mentoring interactions and then (3.2) work local and national teacher organizations to supply PD so that underserved populations in urban and rural communities nationwide gain access to the GD curriculum.