Learning Bioinformatics Through a Justice-Centered Design: Developing Student Relationships With Data in Urban Communities

• In Event: Data Literacy in Context: Culturally Oriented and Place-Based Learning Through Data

Abstract

Bioinformatics is a rapidly expanding field that combines data-intensive methods with biological applications to develop solutions to major societal issues such as medical therapeutics (e.g., Azad & Shulaev, 2019; Ju & Zhang, 2015). Over the last few years, our team has explored curricular and instructional strategies to integrate bioinformatics content into high school biology and environmental science curricula. While published educational studies are sparse, in general, there is agreement that due to the complexity of knowledge requirements and the evolving nature of bioinformatics research, curricula should be inductive, and inquiry based. Furthermore, to capitalize on the inherent benefits to health and well-being, students should be encouraged to take ownership of learning products (Machluf et al., 2017) such that they are able to form identities through and with data.
Our project works with teachers and students to address the issue of high asthma rates in urban environments. The curriculum is based on a justice-centered approach (Vakil, 2018) that considers: 1) representations of ethics in the curriculum (examining individual rights to clean air); 2) identity in the learning environment (how polluted air impacts students and their families); and 3) political vision (how students can take action in their communities). Through activities that use mobile phones with sensors to collect air-quality data (carbon monoxide and particulate matter) embedded in problem-based learning lessons, students analyze data sets and compare visualizations of their local data with data from different parts of the US. They examine variables that impact air pollution, such as the location of factories in low SES communities and explore the consequences of these variables. Ultimately, students are asked to research and select actions that they and their community can take to improve their local air- quality.
The research question we explore in this presentation is: To what extent and how do students articulate a justice-centered understanding? From 2019 to 2021, we worked with 14 high school biology and environmental science teachers and their classrooms in a large urban school district in Philadelphia. We collected data from 17 focus group interviews (46 students) representing 15% of the student study population. The data were coded for articulations of Vakil’s (2018) justice-centered categories from questions that probed how their knowledge could be applied in their everyday lives, the importance of the issue, and whether they felt empowered to take action in their community.
Results demonstrated a range of themes that offer insights into how students developed an understanding of and relationships with their local air quality data that include: 1) Revealing unknowns (how data enables access to hidden information); 2) Ubiquity of the issue (understanding the global nature of the problem); 3) Individual and collective conscientiousness
(realizing and attending to one’s practical impact); and 4) Agentic discourse (feeling knowledgeable and motivated to share concerns and solutions). This presentation aims to highlight both the project design and resulting details of student learning that is anchored in the symposium theme of data literacy in context.

Authors

• Susan A. Yoon, University of Pennsylvania

• Jooeun Shim, University of Pennsylvania

• Katherine M Miller, University of Pennsylvania

• Amanda Cottone, University of Pennsylvania

• Noora Fatima Noushad, University of Pennsylvania

• Thomas Richman, The University of Pennsylvania

• Amin Marei, The University of Pennsylvania

• Blanca Himes, University of Pennsylvania

• Michael Gonzales, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

• Ryan Urbanowicz, University of Pennsylvania