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 Simply the Best!
Preliminary Results
 Our project is unique in integrating community service with research. Some of our initial results suggest several things that might be useful for middle school science teachers who want to interest girls and ethnic minorities in science. It appears that the girls we have been studying have identities that can be influenced in pro-academic ways according to two continua. One is defined by the extremes of being respected vs. feeling victimized. The second is defined by the extremes of gaining empowering individual attention from adults vs. being ignored or restricted by adults. Our argument is that these two continue define the cultural space in which the girls construct their identities and there is a middle space which disposes them much more to academic learning than others spaces. We presented a paper on this at the national conference called "Urban Girls: Entering the New Millenium," in Buffalo, NY, in April, 2000, and have submitted a revised version for publication.
Another preliminary finding is that middle school girls are very interested in real-life problems that science can help explain and solve. Their interest is very specific, however, and requires some familiarity or prior knowledge of the details. We are currently working on recognizing ways that the curriculum can be culturally-responsive in a locally-specific way rather than being culturally-dependent. To do that we are working on program-based projects (like our end-of-the-year BBQ), school-based projects (like creating a field guide to a local park for use by Cole Middle School), and community-based projects (like urban gardening).
We are starting to look at aspects of identity connected to the students' interests, experiences and their use of tools (including technology) by finding connections to canonical science, then using that information to create biology and technology curriculum units, and finally, seeing if that curriculum can further attach the students to school and science.
Our most recent focus includes an emphasis on situated learning theory from the 1991 book Situated Learning by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. We are especially interested in novice-expert relationships, creating virtual communities of practice, and used community-based resources to enhance legitimate peripheral participation. All of these seem helpful in creating cultural spaces within which girls can re-position themselves and develop identities that allow them to imagine themselves as scientists, something we see as critical to academic success.
We have presented eight papers of our initial results at conferences in the last two years. For more information about these papers, please see the Abstracts page.
The Women's Foundation of Colorado has provided funds since 1999 to the Center for Youth in Science, Culture & NewMedia at the University of Colorado at Boulder, for support of Simply the Best! programming.
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