Scientific Literacy through Science Journalism
 

Project Description

The "Scientific Literacy through Science Journalism " project is a four-year, NSF-funded grant based at the University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Education, in collaboration with the Saint Louis Science Center, and Normandy School District. This research project is designed to answer the following question: Does the teaching of science journalism using an apprenticeship model, reliable data sources and science-specific writing standards improve high school students’ understanding of and literate engagement in science?

Begun in 2008, our goal is to develop, pilot and research an innovative and flexible curriculum that teaches high school students the basics of science reporting. To accomplish this, we expect to eventually work with teachers in approximately 50 St. Louis area schools-spanning rural, suburban and urban districts-and with more than 1000 students.

A unique aspect of the approach is that students will become reporters in a real newsroom--"pitching", researching, writing and publishing an original news story. A second group of students, based at the Saint Louis Science Center, under the Youth Exploring Science program, will serve as editors, providing feedback on the content and accepting articles for publication online and in print.

To support the teaching of science journalism, and to help teachers and students as they seek to evaluate science-related text-practicing science journalists, teachers and students will co-create standards and rubrics. These standards and rubrics, and the ways they are used in the teaching and learning process, will be examined and revised throughout the project.

Research questions will be addressed in various school settings, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Some of the questions we will explore include (1)Is the teaching of science journalism an efficacious, replicable and sustainable model for improving scientific literacy? (2) How useful are science-related standards and rubrics for scaffolding and evaluating students' science writing? (3) What is the nature of the engagement in science this apprenticeship model invites?

This project should be viewed as part of a national effort to better understand how the teaching of scientific literacy can be scaffolded, and how engagement in the production and interpretation of science text can be fostered. A project summary of the NSF proposal, which is funded under the Discovery Research K-12 program, can be found here. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-0822354.

Contact us at:
314-516-7311 (office)
314-516-5348 (fax)

Mailing address:
College of Education - Division of Teaching and Learning
One University Blvd. - Marillac Hall, Suite 364
St. Louis, MO 63121-4000

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-0822354.