About the Project
For students from minoritized communities, the science classroom is often not seen as a welcoming space or one that accepts them for who they are or values what matters to them and their home communities.
Bio4Community is developing science learning environments that are consequential and that support students in developing deep disciplinary knowledge in science. Bio4Community aims to leverage students’ lived experiences and expertise to counter inequities and injustices that matter to them and their communities.
Stressed Out! Unit
Together with teachers and seventh grade students, we collaboratively developed a life science curriculum unit that engages students in learning about and targeting a health-related problem in their community.
Through a survey of community members, the team of students, teachers, and researchers identified chronic stress as a top health concern for the community. Chronic stress is tied to increased incidence of cardiovascular disease, susceptibility to infections, and other disorders that disproportionately affect the quality of life and the lifespans of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Stress affects multiple body systems and thus provides a powerful phenomenon for understanding the Next Generation Science Standards performance expectations related to system interactions.
Much of popular science about stress privileges the perspectives of middle class white people and individualized solutions such as exercise, meditation, and mindfulness. While such individual solutions can be effective for temporarily reducing stress, they cannot address the root cause of the stressors themselves. This is because many stressors are the result of systems of oppression that directly harm marginalized individuals and communities.
Much of popular science about stress privileges the perspectives of middle class white people and individualized solutions such as exercise, meditation, and mindfulness.
The Bio4Community curriculum emphasizes the role of unjust rules, expectations, and structures that oppress BIPOC and that are a direct result of the dominant white, middle class, heteronormative culture in which we live. For example, the Stressed Out! unit considers not only the causes and biology of chronic stress, but also fosters student-generated proposals for local solutions that students can enact in their school community.
We studied multiple iterations of the unit in middle school classrooms in New Jersey and North Carolina. Findings from our design-based research efforts are reported in several publications. We offer free professional learning opportunities for middle school teachers who would like to implement the unit with their own students. Contact us for more information.
Stressed Out! was developed by a partnership of researchers and curriculum developers from Rutgers University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Penn State University, the Concord Consortium, and the middle school students and science teachers in our partnering schools.
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Bio4Community supports consequential learning and rightful presence of marginalized students in science classrooms.