Anatomy of a successful K–12 educational outreach program in the health sciences: Eleven years experience at one medical sciences campus

Functional anatomy of the cardiovascular system: Professional development for PreK‐3 teachers using a “Train and equip” method results in learning opportunities for students

“…Help ''can take the form of professional development on how to teach scientific inquiry and content and the availability of necessary materials and equipment' ' (NASTA, 2004). Middle and high school teachers will teach this content if they are ''trained and equipped'' to do so (Burns, 2002). The data presented in this work indicate that the ''train and equip'' professional development method is similarly effective in the PreK-3 arena.…”

“…Depending on the grade level of the participants, the training experience and the contents of the resource kit can be scaled down or up in complexity, that is, vertically aligned or scaffolded, in a grade-appropriate manner. For example, in the PIHS workshop ''Cardiovascular Anatomy and Physiology'' designed for high school teachers (Burns, 2002), the trainees experienced many of the role-playing activities used in the PreK-3 workshop, but then they dissected a preserved cow heart and were given that heart and an undissected one for long-term use with their students. They also were taught a segment on blood pressure and how to use, and were given, blood pressure cuffs.…”

“…The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) established a K-12 outreach program in the health sciences in 1991, the Partners in Health Sciences (PIHS) program (Burns, 2002;PIHS, 2008). Instead of providing students and/or their teachers with a narrow bench research experience (e.g., see Markowitz, 2004;Niemann et al, 2004;Hammamieh et al, 2005), PIHS focused on providing teachers content training in different health science areas, much of it supported with appropriate laboratory experiences.…”

“…From the summer of 1991 through December 2007, 17,746 participants (mostly teachers but some grade 7-12 students) have consumed 68,861 hr of training/education in 120 different health science topics taught by 220 different UAMS faculty from each of the UAMS colleges: medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and health-related professions. Content ranged from specific organ biology, including the cardiovascular system (Burns, 2002) to a variety of cancer-related topics (Burns and Lindsey 2004;Burns, 2008), to behavioral science topics (Kirchner et al, 2000).…”

Cancer Prevention and Control: Where are the Kids?

“…The resource kit contains a profusely illustrated syllabus, a CD copy of all images used in the workshop, and a set of materials and items of equipment-the average cost of a resource kit is $300. As documented in long-term follow-up studies, the training sessions coupled with the use and gift of the resource kits foster the transference of the workshop training into new learning opportunities and activities for students when the participant returns to her/his community school classroom [5][6][7][8][9].…”