Key Concepts in Developmental Psychology and Science Pedagogy Help Undergraduates in High School Science Outreach

INTRODUCTION

The scientific community increasingly recognizes benefits from strategic training in teaching, mentoring, and science communication for future scientists and medical professionals (1–3). While teaching assistantships are available to students at the graduate level, community outreach provides similarly valuable opportunities to undergraduates (4–6), in part by allowing them to develop into and experience new roles. Prior to this study, we surveyed undergraduate students engaging in science outreach to determine what they expected to get from the experience. Most wanted to refine skills such as science communication and mastery of content. Some wanted to experience areas such as mentoring or helping train others (Fig. 1). Most undergraduates are new to areas like mentoring in the sciences (Fig. 2), and transitioning into these novel roles can be intimidating and challenging for students who lack training. This highlighted the need to develop tools that would help our undergraduates transition into teaching and mentoring roles in the context of science outreach.

FIGURE 1.

Undergraduate student expectations from science outreach. Sixteen undergraduates majoring in Biology at High Point University, a private liberal arts institution, were asked to describe their expectations from participation in a collaborative high school science outreach program described in detail elsewhere (7). Student responses were coded into the different categories presented in the figure by four different researchers.

FIGURE 2.

Undergraduates engaging in science outreach are often new to mentoring in the sciences. Sixteen undergraduates majoring in Biology (same population surveyed for Fig. 1) at High Point University, a private liberal arts institution, were asked to describe their prior academic and science mentoring experiences. These undergraduates participated in a collaborative high school science outreach program described in detail elsewhere (7). Answers were coded and quantified.

We set out to develop and test primers integrating developmental psychology and science pedagogy (Appendices 1 and 2), to help ease these transitions for undergraduates working with high school students in science outreach. These primers highlight the fact that effective teachers or mentors need to be simultaneously competent in a particular content area and strategic about relationship-building. Mentoring is both relationship-based and content-based, and mentors need to consider their competence and need for development in both arenas (8). A key part of mentoring is assessing one’s own knowledge and skills and identifying ongoing learning goals. Providing support and training for individuals who will assume mentoring responsibilities is often recognized as an important factor in achieving positive outcomes. Mentors who receive training feel more confident, and these mentoring relationships have been seen to produce more positive results (9). It has been noted, however, that most mentoring programs focus on providing initial orientation about program logistics and general responsibilities but lack a deliberate and sustained effort to provide continued support and feedback throughout the mentoring experience. A mentoring program, ideally, will facilitate mentors’ development of strategies and skills to address their ongoing effectiveness and address core principles such as the growth and development of children, pedagogy, and opportunities for providing ongoing feedback and guidance (10).

It is of interest to note that faculty in Colleges of Education are often challenged to ensure that prospective teachers enrolled in teacher preparation programs possess the content knowledge needed to be effective in the delivery of instruction in the sciences, mathematics, history, and writing. The opposite is often true when undergraduates majoring in these content areas volunteer to serve as mentors in K–12 schools. Pedagogical knowledge about learning theory as it applies to child and adolescent development, behavior, and student engagement is often a missing piece in many university-based mentoring initiatives.

We first tested these primers in the context of a 3000-level service-learning Cell Biology course taught in the spring of 2017 at High Point University (HPU), a private liberal arts institution. As part of this course, students created laboratory modules and used them to engage local high school students with basic concepts in Cell Biology during science outreach events (7). In the course, there were four two-hour science outreach events set up and scheduled collaboratively by high school staff and the HPU cell biology instructor. Undergraduates used these primers to prepare to work with 9^th and 12^th graders. At the end of the semester, undergraduates reported on their course evaluations that becoming familiar with key concepts in developmental psychology and science pedagogy helped them better prepare for and succeed in their science outreach experiences. Important topics from developmental psychology included how teens think, easy ways to connect with students aged 12 to 18 during learning activities, and anticipated challenges and troubleshooting strategies specific to these age groups.

PROCEDURE

Undergraduate students preparing to engage in hands-on, experiment module-focused science outreach with high school students (10) in the context of an upper-level service-learning Cell Biology (spring 2017) course were asked, as a homework assignment, to read and reflect on a primer on developmental psychology and science pedagogy.

Primers were crafted with the purpose of introducing undergraduate students to their audience, and were adapted either for high school students in general (Appendix 1) or for high school seniors specifically (Appendix 2), using information provided in an educational psychology text (11). The primer was developed in advance as the result of collaborative efforts of a faculty member in the Department of Biology (Segarra), who was the instructor for the service-learning Cell Biology course, and a professor in the School of Education (Tillery) responsible for teaching Educational Psychology. Preliminary meetings between the two professors included evaluating the nature of the outreach and the population of students to be served and sharing information about the expectations of the content and instruction to be delivered by the undergraduates. It was agreed that the primer should include: 1) general developmental characteristics of the age groups to be served through the outreach program, 2) relevant strategies for delivering content to maximize student engagement, 3) effective grouping techniques for classroom activities, and 4) tips for addressing potential behavior/classroom management issues relevant for the high school classroom. Undergraduates and instructors then met together at the start of the semester to discuss the material prior to engaging in science outreach. Undergraduate students were given the opportunity to ask questions of the instructors who were leading the science outreach experiences. The frequently asked questions (FAQs) during these discussions included questions focused on how to best differentiate content for an individual’s abilities and disposition (Table 1). We found that the conversational nature of these interactions provided a comfortable context in which to address the anticipated concerns and anxieties of the undergraduate students while encouraging them to think strategically about engagement and effective presentation style for diverse audiences.

TABLE 1.

Undergraduate Science Outreach Volunteers Discuss Science Pedagogy and Cognitive Development of Adolescents: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Recommended Answers by General Topic^*

Topic: Pedagogy
What has been your hardest teaching moment, and what was your solution to it? ANSWER: Answer will vary depending on instructor. What format would you use to give a quick pre-test? ANSWER: You can use a variety of methods including short surveys that can be easily administered at the beginning of or prior to the outreach event using tools like Survey Monkey, Qualtrics, or PollEverywhere. If you want to do this informally at the event you can pose a series of questions at the beginning of the outreach experience to gauge how much your audience knows of Cell Biology. Their answers can then be used to tailor your explanations to what they already know. What is your favorite age group to work with and why? ANSWER: Answer will vary depending on instructor. What is a good student-to-“leader/teacher” ratio? ANSWER: The ideal teacher to student ratio is 1:3. However, it is likely that you will have to work with many more students. When this is the case, you can divide students into groups. When done effectively, group work can enhance the participant experience by allowing them to receive more attention and opportunity to engage with the tasks at hand. What information do you need to create groups that will work well together? ANSWER: Group size is important. You should strive to have groups no bigger than three participants. Also, you should consider gender and ethnic diversity when grouping students so that each group has members that are different from each other. In addition, if you administered a pre-test to gauge participants’ previous knowledge of the content at hand, you may want to group students together who have different degrees of familiarity with the content. In this way, you allow for members of a group to complement each other. How could we make everyone feel involved, even if they do not fully understand the project or are not fully capable of learning the material as quickly as their peers? ANSWER: Give all students an opportunity to work at the bench and engage with the activities. Also, you can use open-ended questions to informally gauge whether or not the students you are working with are engaged with the content and understand what they are doing.
Topic: Science Communication
What is the best way to simplify science concepts? ANSWER: Try to strip unnecessary jargon from the vocabulary you are using, replacing it with descriptions of the concepts you are trying to convey in layman’s terms. You will always need to use certain technical vocabulary or jargon (for example—cell, molecule…). Before you do, make sure you define terms for your audience using non-technical language. Perhaps you will discover in your pre-test that many of them are familiar with some of this vocabulary!
Topic: Developmental Psychology
How does one collect data to know how adolescents learn? ANSWER: There are various methods to do this including surveys, standardized tests, focus groups, and interviews.
Topic: Classroom Management
What should we do if a student or group of students displays challenging behaviors during our outreach sessions? ANSWER: You must not humiliate or embarrass participants (high school students)—do not single participants out or exclude them. You always want to correct bad behavior with dignity. For these reasons, do not engage in power struggles with participants. You might be better served by just ignoring the behavior until it subsides. If this does not work, discreetly let us (your instructors) know and we can combine efforts to call the students’ attention after the outreach session or before the next one.

^*FAQs during discussions were noted by the instructors leading the discussions. When questions were similar to each other, one representative question was chosen and provided in this table, in the interest of brevity.

Approximately one month into the semester, a second session was conducted to provide opportunities for reflection about the actual experiences of the undergraduates since beginning their mentoring in the high school classroom. The session was designed by both instructors to allow for discussion of “real-time” issues that were encountered regarding the key components of developmental characteristics, strategies for delivering content, grouping techniques, and classroom management. While session one focused primarily on delivering pedagogical knowledge in a proactive fashion, session two provided suggestions for any needed intervention as undergraduates reflected on their experiences.

CONCLUSION

We surveyed the students to identify the ideas they perceived as their takeaways from having read the primers (either Appendix 1 or Appendix 2, depending on the target audiences). In general, students’ main takeaways were:

• Someone’s feelings and emotions can influence how they learn.

• Not all students of the same age will have the same ability to grasp content in a particular area of science.

• Cognitive ability depends on many factors including some that are social in nature.

• One can differentiate content and activities to fit the cognitive ability of the target audience.

Upon the conclusion of the science outreach activities, students indicated on their course reflections/evaluations (administered using Google Forms) that these primer discussions helped them get ready to work with high school students—specifically by preparing them to develop into new roles and face the unexpected. We plan to use these primers (Appendices 1 and 2) in future service-learning Cell Biology courses at HPU. Current efforts at HPU are focused on developing similar primers for other service-learning courses and outreach activities.