Quattro Alliance for Science and Language Integration

Abstract

The Science & Health Education Partnership (SEP) of the UCSF in strong collaboration with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) proposes a National Institutes of Health (NIH) SEPA the Quattro Alliance for Science and Language Integration. Through the Quattro Alliance SEP will both develop a professional development program in science and language and undertake a comprehensive research documentation and dissemination effort. Quattro will establish a professional community of four groups of participants – elementary school teachers UCSF volunteers elementary English language learning (ELL) students and a collaborative of evaluators – to promote the integration of science learning and language development in elementary schools and to increase access to rigorous science learning for ELL students in SFUSD. Science learning in this effort refers to engaging students in the development of both scientific concepts and investigation skills. Language development here refers to student understanding of the forms functions and vocabulary of scientific discourse. This effort will be accomplished through four specific aims: 1) to develop strong scientist-teacher partnerships grounded in the research literature on science & language teaching and learning; 2) to provide ELL students with access to rigorous science learning and the development of the skills required for academic discourse in science; 3) to establish a generative community of science educators who will develop a Framework of goals and concrete classroom strategies that can be used to integrate science learning and language development; 4) to create dissemination materials based on the generation of a Quattro Framework and evaluation data collected during the project to provide strategies for the integration of science and language to school districts and universities nationwide. These specific aims will be addressed through three integrated programmatic structures: 1) Quattro Beginning oursework; 2) Quattro Science Clubs and 3) the Quattro Professional Community. These efforts will employ three innovations in the integration of science and language learning. First the project will engage significant numbers of teachers and UCSF scientists and clinicians in partnership a novel approach to the integration of language development and science learning. Second this community of science educators will develop an evidence-based and accessible framework for integrating science and language teaching and learning in elementary school classrooms. Finally the proposed effort will occur in a large polylingual urban school district. Documentation of the effort analysis of evaluation data and the generation of a framework for integrating science and language learning in the classroom will be assembled into dissemination materials designed for use by universities and school districts across the United States.