STeLLA CO²

BSCS Science Learning has developed a nationally-recognized program for teacher learning called STeLLA^®, Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis. K-12 science teachers who want to implement research-based curriculum, improve their teaching, or navigate next generation science all have something to gain from this proven program. And so do their students. STeLLA is based on a 17-year line of research and development at BSCS. It has demonstrated impacts on both teacher and student learning above and beyond any impacts from a traditional science teacher professional learning program.

STeLLA’s impact is significant across contexts. It works in preservice and inservice settings for elementary, middle, and high school teachers.

So what’s next? We’re translating research into practice by creating broadly accessible versions of the program.

STeLLA is now available online and will soon be available in hybrid format. We’re currently working to expand STeLLA to different grade levels and science disciplines.

How STeLLA Works

STeLLA helps teachers motivate students to learn science. Specifically, it supports teachers in learning to use effective teaching strategies through a powerful video-based lesson analysis approach. Strategies include engaging student thinking and organizing instruction in a way that connects science ideas. Teachers learn to use these strategies by analyzing classroom videos, and sharing their thinking in facilitated sessions with other teachers. The STeLLA program takes place in-person, online, or in a hybrid format over the course of one school year (typically 90 hours), during which teachers apply what they’re learning in their own classrooms.

A Program Based on Research

Over the last 17 years, STeLLA has demonstrated impacts on both teacher and student learning above and beyond any impacts from a traditional science teacher professional learning program.

See our growing line of research at-a-glance: Development of STeLLA 

Hire Us

High quality science education is more important than ever. Teachers must prepare students to succeed in a 21st century society, where scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills are essential. To prepare teachers to achieve this goal, BSCS is working to bring the STeLLA approach to teachers nationwide through partnerships with schools, districts, teacher educators, and funders. Learn more.

Place-Based Learning for Elementary Science at Scale (PeBLES2) supports educators in making science learning experiences meaningful for their students—by connecting to local phenomena, communities, and cultures.

Project Inspiration

What do today’s science learners find interesting and relevant?  

This is a question we consistently wrestle with at BSCS Science Learning—particularly when we are developing instructional materials programs for broad audiences nationwide. Our goal is to create materials that engage, inspire, and prepare all learners to use science effectively throughout their lives. And to do that, we must anchor the materials in compelling, real-world phenomena. 

But what is compelling—for all learners? Realistically, there is not one phenomenon that will resonate with everyone in exactly the same way. Our world is made up of individuals with different backgrounds, cultures, and everyday lived experiences that shape their perspectives and interests. Still, we feel strongly about reaching all learners, especially those from underserved communities.

At BSCS, we want to support educators in tailoring science learning experiences for their specific contexts—so that all kids get to learn science through the lens of what really matters to them. We’ve partnered with the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance (MMSA) to do just that.

About the Project

In the PeBLES2 project, we are working with MMSA to support equitable access to place-based science learning opportunities. This entails collaborating with upper elementary educators to make science learning meaningful for students—by connecting to local phenomena, communities, and cultures. 

BSCS is leading the development of phenomena-driven units for grades 3–5. These units are designed for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and are grounded in phenomena that can be adapted for various local contexts. MMSA is guiding teachers in incorporating locally or culturally relevant phenomena into these units through a two-year enactment study. 

We’re currently exploring how teachers adapt units over multiple years as well as the impact of this intervention on teacher self-efficacy and agency in science teaching and students’ perceptions of relevance. 

What’s Next

A tested and revised 4th grade Earth Science unit and accompanying professional learning materials will be freely available by December 2024. This unit focuses on weathering erosion and deposition.

The Issue

Racism is a serious problem in the United States. Research has shown that the biology curriculum can affect how students think about race. It can lead students to believe more strongly in three misconceptions:

1. People of the same racial group are genetically uniform.
2. People of disparate races are categorically different.
3. Biologically-influenced abilities cannot change.

Individuals often justify racism with these misconceptions by arguing that it is pointless to try and reduce social inequality, because race biologically determines ability.

Our Focus

How can such beliefs be (un)learned through biology education?

What We’ve Learned

Teaching about human difference is not socially neutral.

Insights from our research have begun to illustrate how biology education affects the development of racism, for better or worse. We’ve learned:

• When biology education causes youth to perceive too much genetic variation between racial groups, it can increase prejudice.
• Conversely, the way we teach biology can reduce racial prejudice by helping students understand that there is more genetic variation within racial groups than there is between them.

In sum, the humane genetics research project is beginning to suggest that genetics education can create humane or inhumane outcomes depending on how it addresses human difference. If this hypothesis is correct, then learning about the social and quantitative complexities of human genetic variation research could prepare students to become informed participants in a society where human genetics is invoked as a rationale in sociopolitical debates concerning racial inequality.

At present, genetics education does very little to address how information about human genetic difference is distorted by racialist ideologues (The New York Times). Instead, our scholarship suggests that genetics curricula could actually contribute to harmful racial ideologies (The Atlantic). The kind of genetics education that we envision would promote human welfare by exposing the scientific flaws in biological justifications of racism and sexism. Our research and development explores how to bring that kind of education into existence.

What are the important ideas to teach students?

To learn about the content of a humane genetics education click here.

It is difficult to predict the potential impact of implementing a more humane genetics education in all school settings because we have not yet studied our intervention using a nationally representative sample of schools. Nevertheless, we can make some predictions about the clinical significance of implementing a more humane genetics education using statistics from our recent field experiments in 8th-12th grade biology classrooms, such as the one below:

Donovan, B. M., Semmens, R., Keck, P., Brimhall, E., Busch, K. C., Weindling, M., Salazar, B. (2019). Towards a More Humane Genetics Education: Learning about the social and quantitative complexities of human genetic variation research could reduce racial bias in adolescent and adult populations. Science Education, 1–32. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1002/sce.21506 

For example, using data from this most recent publication we can calculate the number needed to treat, which tells us how many people need to receive an intervention in order to prevent one additional case of a disease. The disease we are trying to prevent through our research is racism. Studies have found that racism is a public health problem because it is significantly associated with mortality in African Americans (e.g. read this study). The racially biased beliefs we have attempted to prevent through our intervention research are the following:

1. the belief that there is more genetic variation between races than there is within them.
2. the belief that racial groups differ cognitively and behaviorally simply because of genetic differences between races.

Changing these beliefs through genetics education is important because previous studies have found that people use these beliefs to justify racially prejudiced policies.

To calculate the number needed to treat one merely takes the inverse of the absolute risk reduction (or 1/ARR). We found that our humane genetics intervention reduced the risk that students developed a racially biased perception of genetic variation by 16.2%, and this risk reduction was statistically significant (p < 0.05). Likewise, we found that our humane genetics intervention resulted in a 6.6%, statistically-significant, reduction in the risk of students believing that racial groups differ cognitively and behaviorally simply because of their genes.

Our results therefore suggest that for every six students who learn from our intervention, we can prevent one additional student from developing the misperception that there is more genetic variation between races than there is within them. Furthermore, for every 15 students who learn from our intervention, our results suggest that we can prevent one additional student from agreeing that racial groups differ cognitively and behaviorally because of genetic differences between races. Altogether, if a biology classroom has 30 students, then our results suggest that implementing a more humane genetics education could prevent five students from developing the misperception that there is more genetic variation between races than within them and two of these students may also be prevented from believing that racial groups differ cognitively and behaviorally because of genes.

For a deeper dive into our line of research, review our research statement  and published papers below. Click here to watch a video of the presentation, Towards a More Humane Genetics Education, or here to watch a video of the presentation, Genomics Literacy Matters.

Watch the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2019 briefing, Better Biology Instruction for a More Equitable Society, here (the presentations begin at 9 minutes and 18 seconds).

What We’re Currently Exploring

1. Genetics education could affect the development of racial bias among adolescents. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 1660985.
2. Genetics education could affect the development of gender bias among adolescents. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 1956152.
3. Genetics education could affect the development of undergraduates’ motivation to pursue STEM. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 1914843.

Published –

1. Donovan, B. M., Semmens, R., Keck, P., Brimhall, E., Busch, K. C., Weindling, M., Duncan, A., Stuhlsatz, M., Buck Bracey, Z., Bloom, M., Kowalski, S., Salazar, B. (2019) Towards a More Humane Genetics Education: Learning about the social and quantitative complexities of human genetic variation research could reduce racial bias in adolescent and adult populations . Science Education.
2. Donovan, B.M., Stuhlsatz, M., Edelson, D.C., Buck Bracey, Z.B. (2019) Gendered Genetics: How reading about the genetic basis of sex differences in biology textbooks could affect beliefs associated with science gender disparities . Science Education.
3. Donovan, B.M. (2018). Looking backwards to move biology education toward its humanitarian potential: A review of Darwinism, Democracy, and Race . Science Education.
4. Donovan, B. M. (2017) Learned inequality: Racial labels in the biology curriculum can affect the development of racial prejudice . Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 54(3), 379-411.
5. Donovan, B. M. (2016). Framing the genetics curriculum to support social justice: An experimental exploration of how the biology curriculum influences students’ beliefs about the racial achievement gap . Science Education. 100(3), 586-616.
6. Donovan, B. M. (2015a). Putting humanity back into the teaching of human biology . Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 52, 65-75.
7. Donovan, B. M. (2015b). Reclaiming race as a topic of the United States biology curriculum . Science Education. 99(6) 1092-1117.
8. Donovan, B. M. (2014). Playing with fire? The impact of the hidden curriculum in school genetics on essentialist conceptions of race . Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51(4), 462–496.
9. Donovan, B. M., Moreno Mateos, D., Osborne, J. F., & Bisaccio, D. J. (2014). Revising the Economic Imperative for US STEM Education . PLoS Biology, 12(1), e1001760.

Media Mentions –

The New York Times

The New York Times Learning Network

Education Week

The Atlantic

Learning & the Brain

Independent

The ABC 

The ABC Media 

The Brown Daily Herald

Boston Globe

What works best for teachers and students in science education interventions? Statistics can provide some insight—but only if interpreted in context. For instance, the way a study is conducted may impact the outcome, independent of the actual effectiveness of the intervention.

To help researchers understand study results in context, BSCS Science Learning reviewed hundreds of studies in science education while taking into account the various factors contributing to the outcomes. This work resulted in published findings for student outcomes (AERA Open Journal) and teacher outcomes (The Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness) and online tools for researchers to use when planning or evaluating studies of science education interventions.

The online tools, POWER Calculator for Student Outcomes, and POWER Calculator for Teacher Outcomes use data from the studies BSCS reviewed to estimate the likely effect size for a new study based on its characteristics, such as the nature of the study, the scientific discipline, characteristics of teachers or students, and other key variables.

When planning a study, researchers can use the POWER calculators to determine how many participants will be required to obtain a statistically significant result, giving researchers and funders increased confidence that they will obtain such a result without spending money and time unnecessarily on participants that are not needed. Once a study is completed, the tool enables users to interpret the size of their study’s effect in the context of similar studies.

In addition to the research findings and POWER calculators, BSCS has published the two data sets related to student and teacher outcomes. Researchers who want to do their own meta-analyses of the studies can explore the data from different angles, while efficiently using BSCS’s coding system.

Results from these meta-analyses are published in AERA Open and the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.

Plants are all around us. They are essential to our existence. Yet despite their ubiquity, how many science teachers truly understand plant biology and know how to effectively teach it to their students?

Digging Deeper, a BSCS Science Learning research and development project, has been investigating this question for the past four years. Building on the success of PlantingScience, Digging Deeper adds a robust professional learning model that engages teachers and scientists as collaborators in teaching and facilitating real-world science experiences for students.

Until now, the impact of bringing teachers and scientists together to learn, reflect on, and implement meaningful science experiences for students has been unexplored. Results of Digging Deeper will help validate methods and protocols that not only serve to eradicate “plant blindness” and prepare future scientists for plant biology challenges facing the planet but are also relevant to developing teacher and student expertise in inquiry-based science in any science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) discipline.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) identifies three equally important dimensions to learning science: science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. This focus on 3D learning has created a critical need for assessments that can measure students’ ability to use these three dimensions together to make sense of real-world phenomena.

BSCS Science Learning is currently continuing a line of research started at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)* to directly address this need. In our ASPECt-3D project, we will develop and validate scenario-based assessment tasks to measure students’ ability to use the three dimensions to make sense of energy-related phenomena. The assessment tasks will consist of multiple-choice and constructed-response items aligned to elementary, middle, and high school NGSS standards. Our assessment study will include a diverse range of teachers and students in grades 4-12 from urban, rural, and suburban locations across the United States.

As a result of this project, we will produce sets of NGSS-aligned assessments for measuring students’ 3D understanding of energy. We will also develop supporting materials for teachers, including the unpacking of the performance expectations, summaries of student misconceptions and difficulties, scoring rubrics, psychometric properties of the assessments, and guidelines for the use of the assessments and interpretation of results. Additionally, we will use our findings to create a professional learning workshop to help support assessment developers and classroom teachers in creating their own three-dimensional assessments. All products will be made available online for elementary, middle, and high school grade levels.

*ASPECt-3D builds on a previously funded IES project (R305A120138) focused mainly on assessing students’ understanding of science content. The researchers developed three vertically equated, multiple-choice instruments to assess students’ progress on the energy concept.

What exactly does a scientist do? How does she collect information and make sense of it all?

Data Nuggets, a four-year research project between Michigan State University and BSCS, is studying the effects of bringing real-world data into middle and high school classrooms. Students are given the opportunity to dive into an actual scientist’s research and practice looking for patterns in the data, develop explanations about natural phenomena, and identify hypotheses and predictions.

From topics such as “Won’t you be my urchin” to “Sticky situations: big and small animals with sticky feet,” teachers get to pick and choose from numerous options that get their students to think like a scientist, while the scientists who write the curriculum have an opportunity to share their research findings with a new audience in science.