Frontiers in Physiology
 Integrating Inquiry, Equity and the Internet

External Evaluation of the Program
Program Components

Professional Development Fellowship

 Local Outreach Teams 

Curriculum Development Fellowship

Since it's inception in 1990, the APS has sought to regularly improve the Frontiers in Physiology program and to assess its impact on teachers and their teaching. Since 1997, the APS has worked with an external evaluation team, Horizon Research, Inc. on both formative and summative evaluation of the Frontiers program.  The Horizon Research evaluation team has collected a variety of data, including teacher surveys, interviews, and observations to assess the quality and impact of the program.

Between 1995 and 2004, three independent external evaluations were done by Horizon Research, Inc., exploring the impacts of the Frontiers in Physiology Professional Development Fellowship. In this year-long program, middle and high school science teachers spend one summer working in a physiologist’s research lab, participate in an intensive week-long summer institute called the Teaching Forum, complete online assignments before and after the Forum, and create inquiry-based science lessons for distribution by the APS. These three evaluative studies show that the Frontiers program has important positive impacts on teachers, including:

  • Their enthusiasm and confidence about teaching science;
  • Their understanding of the scientific process and how research is done;
  • Their content knowledge in physiology;
  • Their understanding of what inquiry-based teaching is, how to use it successfully in the classroom, and how to convert cookbook labs to inquiry-based labs;
  • Their awareness of gender and racial/ethnic issues and how to promote achievement among diverse learners;
  • Their understanding of educational technology and how to successfully incorporate it into their lessons to improve their effectiveness;
  • Their understanding and use of the National Science Education Standards and their own state standards; and
  • Their working relationships with the scientific research community.
Teachers in the program have demonstrated:
  • Increased use of inquiry-based lessons in their classrooms;
  • Increased use of Internet technology in their lessons; and
  • Their proficiency in making lessons more “student-centered.”

Click here (.pdf) for a three-page executive summary
based on evaluation data collected by Horizon Research, Inc.
on both the implementation of program activities and their impact over ten years.

Frontiers in Physiology has four main goals and objectives:

  • Develop, evaluate, refine, and disseminate a model and materials for integrating inquiry, equity, and technology into the middle/high school science classroom and into professional development programs;
  • Build ongoing working relationships between research scientist and middle/high school teachers through research and inservice experiences and online communications;
  • Promote the adoption of national standards for K-12 content and pedagogy --especially inquiry, equity, and technology use -- by middle and high school science teachers through ongoing inservice activities developed collaboratively by teachers and researchers; and
  • Increase teachers' skills in developing, assessing, and utilizing web-based curricular materials and resources, especially in integrating online resources into inquiry-based teaching.

Frontiers in Physiology is a program of the American Physiological Society (APS), and is sponsored by APS, the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), Science Education Partnership Awards (SEPA Grant #RR15251), and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK Grant #DK 39306) at the National Institutes of Health. 

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Results and Evaluation

 

What do past participants say?

 

What do APS Research Hosts have to say?
Frontiers' 
Building Blocks

Integration of the Internet

 

Inquiry-based Class

and Lab Activities

 

Reflecting on 
Teaching

 

Resources

The American Physiological Society, Education Office
9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD   20814-3991
Phone: 301-634-7132   Fax: 301-634-7098   Email: education@the-aps.org