Frontiers in Physiology Impacts Evaluation Results

Evaluation Results

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.

Home  |  Programs  |  Framework  |  Impacts  |  Resources

The Frontiers in Physiology programs are developed and sponsored by the American Physiological Society with additional funding from the National Center for Research Resources (Science Education Partnership Award #RR15251) at the National Institutes of Health.