Points of View: Effective Partnerships Between K-12 and Higher Education

Teaching laboratory science in a high school setting has never been easy. Time is available in short blocks; laboratory facilities are often quite limited. In most American high schools, teachers are responsible not only for preparation of their lesson plans, but also for ordering and preparing any materials to be used in a lab, with little or no technical support. Nonetheless, there is an expectation that science instruction will be inquiry-based, giving students opportunities to carry out their own investigations of the natural world. In biology, the challenge is compounded by the fact that the field is changing rapidly, with new information, experimental approaches, and social issues arising at an increasing rate.

With these concerns in mind, a group of Washington University (WU) faculty invited the science teachers at a local high school, University City, to meet with us in 1989 to explore ways that we could work together to find ways that the strengths of the university could be used to support local high schools. Our brainstorming sessions concerning biology became focused with the opportunity to apply for a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A particular concern of the teachers was to find ways to incorporate DNA science into their curriculum while maintaining a grounding in genetics, but adding hands-on experiments that would help students to understand the science underlying developments such as personal identification through DNA samples, the sequencing of the human genome, and other recent advances with societal implications.

In preparing our grant application for NIH, we identified two important limitations that could be overcome by appropriate use of the funding. First, while both university and high school faculty come up with great ideas when brainstorming together on new teaching tools and labs, neither group has the time to render these ideas into well-written, labtested classroom materials. It is essential to identify individuals with good writing skills, a solid science background, and classroom experience to become “lead writers/organizers” for the project. This person must have salary support from a grant (or other sources) to allow him or her to devote appropriate time to the project. University and high school faculty will make essential contributions at every step, from first draft, to testing, to critique and review, but the lead writer is the person who then goes back and generates the revised text using the results from critique and discussion. Second, while university faculty generally has enough flexibility to be able to arrange meetings with colleagues, high school faculty frequently does not. To overcome this obstacle to a group effort in writing and implementation, we budgeted funds to provide an extra science teacher for the high school, allowing the high school administration to create a schedule with all biology teachers having an extra, common planning period to work together with us in creating Modern Genetics for All Students.

Our goal was to design curriculum materials that could be used throughout the St. Louis area, in any of the 30-plus public school districts, or in private or parochial schools. This creates a second set of challenges. Each district or school has its own curriculum, and several different textbooks are in use. Thus the unit needed to be sufficiently complete to be used as such, without other supporting materials, but also flexible enough to be incorporated into a wide number of different ongoing biology curricula. Thus the core of our curriculum development effort became the generation of a number of activities—wet labs, simulations, model building, discussions, or role playing—that would engage students and could be incorporated into any first-year high school biology class. Flexibility is critical; some schools will use all of the activities, some only a few, the decision often being driven by available time. As biology textbooks get thicker and thicker, one cannot simply add a new unit (e.g., “Molecular Genetics”) to the curriculum. One must instead provide teachers with materials that allow them to strengthen the work in a given portion of their current curriculum. It is essential to provide a “guide” to Modern Genetics, showing where each experiment or activity can be used to advantage with any of the several textbooks commonly in use. More recently, we have also prepared a similar guide showing how the use of Modern Genetics allows schools to help their students meet the science standards for the state of Missouri.

Both high school and university faculty agreed that our curriculum project should be targeted to students taking their first high school biology course. While most high schools encourage taking more science, only two year-long science courses are required for graduation in Missouri (and many other states). Thus, if we are to reach all of our citizens, we must target the first-year biology course. The development of DNA science in the United States—the advent of methods of gene cloning and analysis, the sequencing of the human genome, and so on—has been fueled by tax dollars, and we felt it important that all citizens have an opportunity to learn about what their tax dollars had purchased. In order to exercise their right to genetic privacy, to make use of genetic information when it might help the family to make health care decisions, and to contribute to the dialogue on how DNA technology should be used, all students need to have a basic understanding of genetic principles and the availability of DNA sequence information. This decision, however, generated a further challenge: that of choosing language that was both scientifically accurate and accessible to this audience. Here the collaboration of university and high school faculty was absolutely essential. Accurate simplification requires a deep understanding of the science involved, while generation of accessible information requires the teacher's knowledge of the student. Careful work and many revisions are required to achieve the right balance—minimizing jargon while at the same time teaching vocabulary, providing guidance and examples while at the same time stimulating problem solving.

The current version of Modern Genetics for All Students is now available in print or on the Web ( http://www.so.wustl.edu/) and includes both student and teacher materials. The four chapters are“ DNA: The Hereditary Molecule” (which includes spooling DNA, modeling DNA structure, the gene expression dance, and transforming bacteria with lux genes to glow in the dark), “Passing Traits from One Generation to the Next” (which includes sea urchin fertilization, modeling inheritance with Reebops and other simulations, a genetic cross with yeast or Fast Plants, and an introduction to the chi-square test), “How Genes and the Environment Influence Our Health” (which includes inducing mutations with UV light, examining heart disease, and investigating human genetic disorders using gel electrophoresis), and “Controlling Our Genetic Futures” (which includes a discussion of the Promise & Perils of Biotechnology: Genetic Testing, from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, and an introduction to group decision making, with two case studies to challenge the students to resolve issues resulting from genetic testing).

In assembling Modern Genetics, we made use (with permission) of many excellent materials developed by others, creating de novo materials only as needed. The current version represents more than 10 years of testing in local classrooms, with several rounds of revision. Assessments to date show the materials are effective, as measured by average learning gains on pretests and posttests; a more intensive assessment is currently under way. However, DNA science continues to move ahead at a rapid rate, and we are now in the process of creating additional chapters that will provide material for either an honors first-year or a second-year biology class, including human genome sequencing and implications for health care, how plants are transformed and the implications for agriculture, and other recent developments. Both the materials developed for Modern Genetics and the“ workshop” style of teaching commonly practiced by high school teachers are now being used in a course (DNA Science: A Hands-on Workshop) for nonscience majors at WU.

Developing curriculum materials is of no practical value if teachers cannot implement them, and again, our partnership between high school and university faculty has been essential in developing a practical implementation model. After development work with University City High School, the partnership was expanded to test the materials in urban, suburban, and rural high schools in the St. Louis area. Implementation of Modern Genetics is most effective if the “unit” for joining the project is the high school; specifically, all of the faculty teaching first-year biology need to agree to implement this change together. Administrative support is essential; we ask the principal, the science coordinator, and the superintendent for curriculum to write a letter of agreement as part of the partnership development. As the number of participating schools has grown (now more than 20 and adding 3-4 each year), recruiting new schools to the project has not been difficult. Teachers appreciate the opportunity to work together and to work with the university.

For a high school to implement Modern Genetics, three things are needed in addition to commitment: teacher training, start-up equipment, and classroom-ready supplies and support. Many current teachers received their formal training before DNA science was commonly taught to undergraduates. We provide a one-week (full-time) summer workshop to provide background in molecular biology, an opportunity to work through most of the Modern Genetics activities, and presentations and discussions with WU researchers and other users of DNA technology. The workshop (which can be taken for graduate-level academic credit) is a joint responsibility, engaging both current WU staff and high school teachers already using Modern Genetics who can speak knowledgeably about classroom implementation, providing coaching in this regard. To date, we have been able to support direct costs of the workshop from grant funding, but the school districts provide the stipends to support their participating teachers. Each school joining the project also needs a start-up set of equipment (pipettors, gel rigs, power supplies, etc.). A basic classroom set is provided from grant funding, and additional loaner equipment is available. In some cases (usually following the first year of implementation), an enthusiastic Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO) has provided additional funds to expand this base.

As noted above, most high school teachers do not have access to technical support, and many are with students almost all of their working day. Thus an experiment requiring sterile agar plates has required either a substantial supply budget to purchase these or a teacher willing to spend the weekend with a pressure cooker to prepare same. The sort of preparation facilities available at most universities can be used to overcome this problem, and provide economies of scale. We have prepared order sheets that allow teachers to specify when they need materials for a given lab, how many students are in each class, and so on. We then generate materials in a classroom-ready form—including those sterile agar plates, aliquoted samples of competent Escherichia coli and DNA, and so on—and deliver these to the school when needed. If a teacher would like support during the first year when implementing a new, technically demanding lab with his or her students, a member of the WU Science Outreach staff will arrange to be with the teacher in the classroom that day. If things go “wrong” (e.g., no transformation! no DNA bands on the gel! etc.), WU staff will troubleshoot, checking the materials and working with the teacher to identify the problem. Support is provided by dedicated Science Outreach staff, with faculty assistance as needed. This support helps teachers overcome a natural barrier to implementing new materials while working with large numbers of students, generally on a tight schedule. In teaching high school biology, there is no time to go back and do something over, so a high success rate in lab work is essential! The different venues of communication help us to develop a personal relationship with each teacher and each school. During the first two years of implementation, WU provides supplies at no cost to the school, using grant funds for this purpose. Starting the third year, we ask schools to pay the cost of raw materials for the supplies they order, while still using core grant support to cover the cost of preparing and distributing materials. Most of the experiments described in Modern Genetics can be implemented at a total cost of about $3 to $4 per student per year (for raw materials) under this scheme. The exception is sea urchin fertilization, a wonderful lab experience, but expensive in the Midwest!

On the whole, we count the Modern Genetics program a success. All of the partner high schools that have joined the program remain affiliated, and others are eager to join us, as resources become available. Our continuing dialogue with high school teachers has informed our efforts to improve beginning undergraduate instruction at WU, both for majors and nonmajors. The most significant problem in maintaining the program is turnover of staff, both at the university and at the high school. Depending on their backgrounds, new university contributors may have a steep learning curve as they develop the appreciation to embrace both the science involved and the committed teaching environment of the high school. Teachers new to a partner school may not“ buy in” to the same degree as those making the original commitment, and they often need an opportunity to participate in the summer workshop. Without strong leadership within a high school, the original commitment can disappear, as a new superintendent, new high school principal, and/or new biology teachers arrive on the scene; in urban schools, such turnover can easily be in excess of 100% in 10 years.

Nonetheless, the partnership that forms the basis for Modern Genetics is now becoming woven into the fabric of the St. Louis educational community. The summer workshop has become a WU standard summer school course. While sustaining the Modern Genetics program represents only one way in which a university and its surrounding high schools can work together, it provides a cornerstone for us, creating a pool of university and high school faculty who know each other and are comfortable working together. This in turn can provide a foundation for many kinds of interactions, positions us as a group to take advantage of funding opportunities targeted to partnerships, and is building a stronger educational community for the St. Louis area.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS