The award-winning English/Spanish WonderWise showcases the work of nine women scientists, including seven ethnic minority women. Their work is seen through virtual field trips that highlight their career path, their tools and data collection techniques, and their own explanations of how research can help solve environmental problems of great current human concern. Each bilingual multimedia kit contains 3 short video clips (biographical and habitat-focused), a CD-ROM with motivating self-discovery research inquiry functions, and five hour-long educator-led activities that address components of the scientist’s field research. To maximize engagement of minority youth at the grade levels in which achievement gaps develop in math and science skills, the WonderWise series targets 4th through 6th graders. WonderWise is currently the standard after-school program curriculum for 4-H educators throughout 28 states and Canada, and also used in public school classrooms. WonderWise is here used as a model to develop guidelines for how ecologists can turn their research experiences into mind-opening virtual ecology education activities that engage minority students, especially Latinos, at the elementary to middle school level, exposing them to ecology career opportunities that they seldom see first-hand in their everyday lives.
Results/Conclusions
WonderWise curriculum research indicates that minority students feel more confident and gain greater understanding of the science content provided because the virtual field trips and interactive CD-ROM activities help them identify more closely and positively with the researcher. The human connection to the researcher's biographical video, how she became interested in environmental research and how she translated that passion for science into her current research activities leads the minority students in a self-discovery adventure in the application of ecological concepts to solve global problems, that raises their self-esteem and empowers them to develop a scientist’s identity, visualizing themselves as future scientists. These results suggest we should try to maximize the opportunities for young minority students to develop a human connection with minority ecologists. Currently, the highest proportion of minorities doing environmental research is likely at the undergraduate level. It is important that we film those students doing field research and discussing how they became interested in science, and develop a research-complementary inquiry activity to teach minority youth the ecological concepts showcased in the virtual field experiences with their older ecology student role models. The same could be done with ecology professors or graduate students to increase the number of times young students experience first-hand the joys, rigor and discoveries of environmental research.