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PIP Proposal: Bio 20 Meets Career and Technology Studies

How can I encourage engagement, and broaden career awareness and relevance,

in Biology 20?

 

Inquiry Question: How can we engage students in making relevant connections between their interests and career goals with the Biology 20 course curriculum, and give them opportunity to develop and practice some of the necessary skills, investigate specialized knowledge, and broaden their career awareness?

 

Project description:

The students and I started out our Biology 20 course with a career inventory looking for ways the students could possibly link their interests and aspirations to the Biology 20 curriculum.  Students were surprised to find out the many ways there could be a connection. This discovery led to the question: How can I provide further opportunities for students to be exposed to, explore, and even work towards career goals? The Human Systems, unit D, is particularly relatable from areas as broad as culinary arts (understanding digestion and related health issues) to mechanics and engineering (biomimetics: where engineers are looking to create more efficient robots based on biological models such as the cilia that line the respiratory tract.) There are, of course, the career areas we would more readily associate with Human Systems as well, such as nursing and physiology.  This unit also corresponds nicely with several courses in the Health Care Services section of Career and Technological Studies Program.

 

The rationale behind Career and Technological studies is to give students the opportunity to engage in their interests and passions, pursue and explore topics that are meaningful to them, and maybe most importantly, to be able to make “make reasoned and effective career decisions, and target efforts to meet their goals.”(1)

 

My Teacher Mentor, Mr. Ben Swen, had already seen the potential overlap within the curricula, had developed a self-study module the students could use in order to have the prerequisite HSS 1010. He also had some of the HCS courses sketched out as projects.

 

My plan is four-fold:

• To incorporate the opportunity right into the classroom as an optional extension to an in-class project

• To give students the opportunity to complete as many modules that align for credit as they would like to

• To develop the projects more fully in line with CTS goals,

• And to create comprehensive rubrics for assessment purposes.  

 

In effect, I am learning how to create cross-curricular connections with Career and Technology Studies programming, in connection with creating inquiry projects that aspire towards the high standards set out by the Galileo Institute.

 

 

CTS goals include:

• allowing students to gain general, transferable skills

• helping students develop specialized skills and knowledge through pathways

• focus teaching and learning by relating similar knowledge, linking shared skills, guiding career exploration, allowing students to make informed career choices, associating common interests and linking education with relevant real-world experiential activities.(1)

 

The Galileo institute based in Calgary Alberta, likewise lays out the attributes of an excellent inquiry based project necessarily include the following:

• Students engage with experts and professionals beyond the classroom to deepen their understand­ing and improve their performance and product.

• The teacher designs op­portunities for students to improve their work as a result of connecting with experts/expertise.(2)

 

The flexibility to incorporate these goals into this project comes under the High School Redesign initiative, with the purpose of increasing personalized learning along with “rigorous, relevant, and mastery learning opportunities”.(3)

 

Method:

 

With these goals in mind students will choose a topic in the Human systems unit to research in-depth.  Students will complete the project individually, but share their project with the class as a small group.  The project and the presentation, while they must meet and communicate certain curricular criteria, are completely open to creative interpretation.

 

By opting into the extension, in order to gain a credit, students will also complete the additional requirements of the HCS courses as part of their project.  This also include a component where they will demonstrate they have reached out to someone in the field associated with their topic. This component can be done over phone, email, or in person, with the intent to broaden their understanding of both their topic, and the career of the person they talked with.  Students can either reach out to someone they know, or get teacher assistance to make a connection.

 

Students can also choose to do more than one project, fulfilling the same requirements as above, with the exception that their other presentations will be done outside of class time, with as many in the audience as they so choose.

 

References:

1) Alberta Education. CTS Program of studies: Philosophy and rationale.

Retrieved Sept 26th, 2018: http://www.learnalberta.ca/ProgramOfStudy.aspx?lang=en&ProgramId=997133#  

 

2) Galileo Educational network.  Galileo.org.  Inquiry Rubric

Retrieved Sept 15th, 2018: http://galileo.org/rubric.pdf

 

3) Alberta Education. Redesigning High School – Moving Forward.

Retrieved Sept 29th, 2018 https://education.alberta.ca/moving-forward-high-school-redesign/moving-forward-with-high-school-redesign-1/