Improving 7th grade students’ understanding of how science works

We examined the effectiveness of the SciTrek outreach program involving two junior high teachers in the same school. SciTrek has run modules in 2nd -8th grade classrooms since 2010, with each classroom participating in two modules per academic year. For this study, students (206) in eight classrooms took part in one 7th grade module focused on conservation of mass lasting six days during the Fall, and a different module focused on cellular respiration and lasting eight days in the Winter. Students took a pre-assessment prior to the modules to determine their ability to identify a testable question, to plan and design an experimental investigation, to analyze and interpret data with computational thinking. Upon finishing both modules, students took the same assessment. Students improved significantly in all aspects, showing improvements of 10–45%. Students with lower academic performance (College Preparatory, three classrooms) improved more and showed more variability in their improvement than those with higher prior academic performance (Honors). The population included socioeconomically disadvantaged (57%) and Hispanic or Latino (64%) students. We discuss the importance of key features of the approach: the inclusion of four to six trained university volunteers in each classroom to guide small group discussions, and the active engagement of the 7th grade students in developing their own questions, designing their own experiments, data collection, and the defense of their conclusion to their peers.