To help teachers use ¡Ciencia Boricua! in their classrooms, Ciencia Puerto Rico has thus far offered 3 half-day professional workshops to 150 public school teachers (grades 2-12), representing 50 schools across Puerto Rico, to show them how to use the book as a complementary tool that reinforces scientific education with contextualized examples. At the end of the workshops, a post questionnaire served as a quantitative measure of their effectiveness and impact. In general, the data suggest that teachers regard ¡Ciencia Boricua! as a tool that could be integrated to their classes and complement science education in Puerto Rico by providing pertinent and culturally relevant examples.
In addition, Ciencia Puerto Rico introduced ¡Ciencia Boricua! to 53 elementary and middle school students from Nueva Escuela Juan Ponce de León (Guaynabo, PR), to assess if the use of contextualized science tools and activities could increase student interest for science and scientific careers. During the semester, the students completed a number of activities including writing summaries or drawing illustrations of their favorite essays; visiting a biomedical science laboratory; receiving the visit of a scientist; writing original science essays; recording science podcasts; and creating a scientific poster to be presented at a professional conference-like event. Throughout the process, quantitative and qualitative data was collected and analyzed using written surveys and interviews. Results of the pre- and post-test comparison showed high normalized gains in items related to interest in current science events, how interesting science work is, and the importance of science in society. There were medium normalized gains in items related to interest in new scientific discoveries, learning Puerto Rican science, and interest in Puerto Rican science and scientists. Students evaluated their visit to the laboratory and the scientist visiting the school overwhelmingly positively. Surprisingly, the project significantly improved the perception of science among female students, but not male students.
Here we provide a model for the use of culturally-relevant tools to complement K-12 science curricula and increase interest in science and scientific careers among young students. In addition, these approaches can be seen as a potential option to keep minority students interested in science by portraying this discipline as something that relates to the students’ experience and community.