- Karen Yanowitz
- Professor of Psychology
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Arkansas State University
- Renee Carroll
- Project Manager
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Arkansas State University
CSI: Creating classroom investigators
NSF Awards: 1031679
2015 (see original presentation & discussion)
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12
Using forensics as a “hook”, the goal of CSI: Classroom student investigations) is to impact classroom students in the mid-South by equipping their teachers with the necessary skills and resources to implement inquiry-based forensic projects in their classrooms. Ultimately, these classroom experiences should change students’ attitudes towards STEM and may influence STEM career goal aspirations. Teachers participated in a 2-week summer institute designed to teach STEM content knowledge and to develop their laboratory skills using forensic science as an integrative theme. A two-day summer camp for 7 – 12th grade students provided teachers with the experience of organizing and implementing an inquiry-based forensic unit with support of grant personnel and other teachers. Teachers continued to use techniques learned in the summer institute in their own classrooms during the academic year and by implementing a family science night event. Teachers, students, and parents all had positive reactions towards the experience. Students had more positive attitudes towards science, teachers changed their pedagogical styles, and parents became more involved in their child’s STEM education.
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Joni Falk
Co-Director
Thanks for sharing this video. Can definitely see how CSI is a great subject to capture students interest. It seems that you are doing teacher institutes over the summer. Do you have follow-up to see how participating teachers change their curricula after attending? Are the family nights for younger students? Are you collecting a corpus of teacher created activities from the institute? You peaked my curiosity… would love to hear more.
Karen Yanowitz
Professor of Psychology
We do have follow-up data, and teachers have incorporated many of the activities that we showcase in the summer institute. Approximately half of our participants follow through with doing the family science night. The attendance at those events varies- some of our teachers have their high school students put on a night for younger students, while others have their own parents/student attend. ALL of our teachers have been uniformly positive about the experience, even when they were a bit hesitant about implementing the event, and many are continuing to run such an night even after their participation has ended. We are collecting teacher created activities, our goal this year is to work on collating the lessons they generated and disseminating them in some fashion. Thanks for your interest!
Kevin Brown
Senior Research Scientist
Definitely a clever way to make science “cool”! I’m wondering if the kids are given mysteries to solve as well as hands-on activities to learn discrete underlying scientific principles? Probably too much to ask, but I could see that providing additional motivation. Related, has the project developed any curricular materials that can be shared?
Karen Yanowitz
Professor of Psychology
Thanks. Yes, the kids do have crimes to solve- that is the context for learning and engaging in the science content and skills. We are working on putting together curricular material to share with a larger audience.
CHARLES MATTHEWS
Looking foward to your curricular materials. I’ll follow your progress. How best to do that?
Karen Yanowitz
Professor of Psychology
Our website is http://altweb.astate.edu/csiscience/ We should be posting materials there in a few months.
CHARLES MATTHEWS
Thanks.
Deborah Kariuki
Computer Science Teacher
Making science popular by using what is currently in kids’ minds is very neat. You video intrigued me. Are these experiments for a lesson, a unity of a semester? How else are teachers encouraging family participation for those parents who are not able to attend the science nights? You video serves to give teachers of all level interesting ways to teach science while kids are having fun and certainly this increase retention. Is there data that you are collecting to show how students who are involved in CSI learning of science are performing as compared to those who are learning in a traditionally taught science classroom? I would be curious to see such data and what other educators in Arkansas who are not using you system are waiting for , good video
Karen Yanowitz
Professor of Psychology
Thanks for your comments. We purposely do not teach it as a curriculum, we want to allow teachers to be able to adapt and use in their classrooms to fit their particular situation. We have tried to collect data from classroom students and a comparison group of students, but we don’t have any strong results from that data collection.
Further posting is closed as the event has ended.