Download Needs Assessment

Over the past year, I have developed a style of teaching that focuses on
student-led discussion of experimental data, all of which is meant to
illustrate the biological concepts they learn in my course. For the next
year, I want to develop my teaching by intentionally incorporating
student-driven inquiry, and embedding ongoing projects as a part of my
class. I would like my students to experience designing experiments that
are both short-term and long-term, and also have the opportunity to
evaluate and re-design experiments that have methodological problems.
The two largest issues I anticipate facing are lack of funds and
administrative pressure. For example, my budget for 6 sections of biology
and 2 sections of AP biology last year was $1000 – almost all of which was
spent on textbooks for the AP biology students. I want to do more lab
investigations, but the fact is that while my school will pay for copies, they
will NOT pay for materials or models, and so any plans for student inquiry
that I develop will have to be on a shoestring budget.
In addition, I work at a school whose administration is 100% devoted to
improving test scores. Our administrators’ pay is based on student
performance on the ACT test, as is the teachers’, and so most of the focus
in our observations is alignment to the test. I have a reputation for
improving student scores, and so the administration has left me alone for
the last 2 years, but if they saw a drop in scores in the sections I teach, I
could probably expect much more administrative scrutiny of my lesson
plans, unit plans, and teaching methodology.
Plans to Share Experience
 Real time – one PolarConnect event, which students can
participate in over the summer for extra credit in the fall term
 Real time – summer homework assignments for my classes as well as
environmental science teachers through the network that involve
interacting with my journal or Youtube channel
 Videos – I have been trained in creating short videos on science
topics and plan to make a LOT of them, for my students and for
other teachers
 Skyping with researchers – I would like to develop relationships not
only with my own PI, but the other PIs who work with us up at Toolik.
These relationships could be carried into my classroom after the
summer, and hopefully some of the people I meet at Toolik would
be willing to Skype into my classroom.
 Lessons and Curriculum – I would like to develop a unit based on
my experience at Toolik. I am especially interested in identifying
ways to align it to the AP biology curriculum, since I think that good,
inquiry-based ecological curricula that are AP-aligned is something
a lot of teachers are hungry for.
Student Needs
 Better understand the nature of science, as an ongoing
process rather than a method, that is conducted
collaboratively
 Better understand how basic research (rather than
development-oriented research or research into particular
maladies) fits into society
 Better understand how to approach and interpret data as
part of the knowledge-generating process
 Better understand ecological systems and interactions
between living and non-living elements of an ecosystem
(such as water, light, atmosphere)
 Develop a connection with polar regions, and an
understanding that changes in the polar regions will affect
other geographic regions
 Develop a broader concept of who does science, which is
much more diverse and includes people who look like my
classroom
Changes to Teaching Methods and Curriculum
 To teach the scientific process in a more scaffolded manner.
Though I do have students conduct independent
investigations, I have not yet figured out how to break down
the scientific process in a way that makes it fully accessible to
all students.
 Help students see the research they do in the classroom as
part of a bigger project. In the class investigations I have
previously done, the students frequently pick the question
they choose to investigate based on familiarity (for example,
“is photosynthesis as effective if a plant is immersed in
soda?”). I would like to create a classroom culture that
understands science as a contribution to science, which may
include asking students to ‘propose’ projects that will be
evaluated based on their potential impact, rather than simply
choosing any variable which is of interest to them.
 To help students understand complex or variable data, and
interpret data using statistical methods. Even at the high
school level, a students’ data interpretation of their own
experiment is often limited to “this one is more than this one.” I
would like to design units which cumulate in projects that
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force students to interpret more complex patterns, or to deal
with variability in data.
Include inquiry in my units focusing on ecosystems. I do not
currently have an inquiry project that is built into my units on
ecosystems. I am particularly interested in having students
design both a short-term and long-term project focused on
ecosystem dynamics.
Teach climate change as a subject. I do not currently teach
about climate change, other than as a small topic that
comes up organically in class discussions on ecosystems. I
need to change this immediately. I want to identify ways that
climate change can be incorporated into multiple units,
much the way that evolution is a driving theme in every unit in
the redesigned AP biology curriculum. I am particularly
interested in this because climate change is going to be and
already is an important issue for social justice, and I would like
questions about disparities in the impact of climate change
across the world to be part of my classroom discussion.
Expectations for My Own Learning
 Content - Ecological Systems and Processes. While I am wellversed in cellular and molecular biology, ecology has always
been an extremely weak area for me. I hope to focus much
of my attention on better understanding ecological systems
and interactions between living and non-living parts of the
ecosystem.
 Content – Climate Change. My knowledge of climate
change is largely informed by informal experiences and
education. I hope to learn what are the essential topics a
student must understand when learning about climate
change, and what sorts of questions are pursued by
researchers in the field.
 Methodology of Field Work. Again, those I have science
training, it is exclusively in lab work, usually with model
organisms. I would like to learn the methodology used by field
scientists and ecologists, and the type of analysis that goes
into studying subjects that exist outside of a controlled
laboratory.