BEST Program: Bioengineering Experience for Science Teachers

Bioengineering Experience for Science Teachers “BEST” Program ABSTRACT The Bioengineering Experience for Science Teachers at the University of Illinois at Chicago was first offered in 2016 to provide a collaborative summer research opportunity for Chicago Public School (CPS) pre-engineering and science teachers. Under the guidance of faculty from the College of Engineering and College of Education, teachers participate in a bioengineering research lab and use the experience to create a curriculum for their own classrooms. The goal of the BEST program is to enhance the skills of urban public high school science teachers and enable them to more effectively communicate the nature of bioengineering to their students. Teachers can choose among diverse research opportunities in rehabilitation engineering, bionanomaterials, biomedical imaging, microfluidics, biomaterials, and regenerative medicine. The BEST program places six teachers in bioengineering research laboratories and employs a Community of Practice model to support development of bioengineering curricula for use in the teachers’ classrooms. This proposal plan enhances the BEST program by expanding the analysis to evaluate curriculum improvement from a pre-program baseline, evaluating teachers in the classroom during curriculum implementation, and strengthened avenues for BEST teachers to disseminate their experience and curricula to a broader audience. The BEST program is scaffolded to support the development of appropriate teaching materials of bioengineering content which translates scientific knowledge into specific curriculum maps, instructional materials, and classroom assessments that are aligned with Common Core State Standards CCSS and Next Generation Science Standards NGSS. As it has been widely shown that teacher influence can be a significant factor in student career interests, the BEST program aims to provide effective professional development to increase teacher’s bioengineering content and pedagogical knowledge to ultimately increase the pipeline of bioengineers.