Funding from the 2000 award from HHMI allowed the Education Program at Barnard to mount three major initiatives during the past academic year: the Institute for Urban Education (IUE), the Dr. X-Ray Project, and Science in the City.

(a) The Institute for Urban Education

The Education Program developed a formal minor course of study leading to teaching certification for students enrolled at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (part of Columbia University). This program enables engineering majors to pursue a minor in education and a New York State teaching certification in physics, chemistry, or mathematics for grades 7 to 12. On the way to earning their teacher certification, these committed undergraduates serve as student teachers in math and science in Bronx and Manhattan high schools under the auspices of the Barnard College Education Program. The Education Program also hired a mathematics teacher with experience as a public school teacher trainer to be the instructor of the junior year, secondary level "methods" course and the coordinator of field placement. We had two engineering juniors as well as two science majors in the secondary methods and field placement courses.

Through the Institute for Urban Education (IUE), administered by the Education Program, nine undergraduate students from Barnard, Columbia, Bates, Mt. Holyoke, and Vassar participate in weekly Science Clubs with eighth graders from five urban middle schools. The forest ecology curriculum for the Science Clubs (orienteering, dendrology, water analysis, and habitats) was developed primarily by Lorrin Johnson (Barnard Biology Department) and John Brady (Black Rock Forest Consortium) and is available on the IUE web site through Barnard College (www.barnard.edu/iue). To prepare the nine IUE students (four of whom are secondary-level and five of whom are elementary-level teachers in training) to teach the science curriculum in their Science Clubs, the group meets in a weekly seminar.

(b) The Dr. X-Ray Project

Funding from the 2000 award has also enabled the HSPP to sponsor a research project by five students who were enrolled in Educational Psychology, a course taught in the fall term 2000 by Professor Susan R. Sacks. They initiated a field-based research project on the learning experiences that maximize the interest of young girls and women in the sciences. The team developed the "Dr. X-Ray scenario" and devised a 63-item questionnaire that they administered to student subjects. The research examines early and late adolescents' attitudes toward the science courses in three geographic locations. The students presented their research at the Mt. Holyoke 54th Annual Undergraduate Psychology Research conference. During the summer of 2001, two students from the original team continued working on the project. They coded data collected in additional questionnaires that had been developed and administered to eighth-grade pupils and to high school students in Maine, Maryland, and New York City. The present research team consists of three of the five students who originally developed the project. Additional data were gathered in NYC high schools during the autumn of 2001, and all questionnaires have now been coded and analyzed. In February 2002, the team presented "Sexing Dr. X-Ray: A Study of Adolescent Attitudes Toward Science" at the National Council for Research on Women Conference: Balancing the Equation for Women and Girls in Science, Engineering, and Technology. The research team is preparing the study for publication during the summer of 2002.

(c) Science in the City

Dr. LeAnn Bell, the Director of Barnard's Education Program, five undergraduate student teachers initiated the Science in the City curriculum project. The project used the questions and concerns that children living in urban neighborhoods bring to the study of science as a starting point for the creation of a curriculum that draws upon local venues and resources for examining scientific questions.

The five undergraduates researched and developed a list of venues in New York City that lend themselves to the study of science, examined science materials and curriculum guides from New York State and the National Science Education Standards, and met with a consultant to discuss project-based and constructivist approaches to urban science education. Based on their research, the students created an interdisciplinary science-based curriculum entitled, "Science in the City: Nature in Your Neighborhood." The curriculum provides thirteen lessons - integrating mathematics, health, reading, writing, poetry, and art - to guide elementary school students in their scientific exploration of the plant life in their neighborhoods. The elementary school students will monitor the process of growing plants, study factors that affect plant growth, visit local parks and the Barnard College Greenhouse, and raise funds for a tree project in their neighborhood. The guide includes a comprehensive resource list of venues in New York City that teachers can use to create additional science units.

The curriculum developed during the reporting period is a pilot project. It has been distributed to all of the third grade teachers at P.S. 75 (on Manhattan's Upper West Side) and to teachers at Middle School 226 (in Ozone Park, Queens). Even if the teachers at these schools don't use the suggested curriculum directly, they can use its lessons as templates for creating their own curriculum materials. Copies of the curriculum have also been provided to all of the elementary student teachers in Barnard's Education Program; they will use at least parts of the curriculum in their student teaching placements at various elementary schools in Manhattan.