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Tanzania trip
The NSF funded GK-12 Project STEP, in collaboration with a NGO, Village Life Outreach Project (VLOP), and the Shirati Health Education and Development (SHED) Foundation, is conducting an educational project in Tanzania. This partnership started in 2006 when a STEP Fellow, Sarah Pumphrey, and her research advisor, Dr. Daniel Oerther (STEP Co-PI), partnered with VLOP to study how to improve access to drinking water and nutrition for villagers and students in the Shirati region of Tanzania. They worked to bring Sarah’s research into STEP schools to provide first-hand knowledge of water and nutrition challenges in East Africa as an authentic approach for teaching and learning STEMM. The US students built sand sifting screens and signed the wood for the screens, which Sarah took to Tanzania and the students there used them to sieve local sand and make their own slow sand water filters. Thus, the students at both places saw how they could impact each other’s life. This project was highlighted at the NSF Budget Rollout for Fiscal Year 2008.
In June 2007 Sarah worked with a elementary and a secondary school teacher to initiate plans to improve access to nourishment through school lunches in Shirati, Tanzania. This preliminary work in Tanzania served as a basis for activities undertaken by STEP, VLOP, and SHED during a recent trip in January 1 to 12, 2008. From October to December, 2007, Fellow Sarah and a REU-supported undergraduate student worked with SHED and the villagers of the Shirati region to improve the quality, breadth, and depth of scientific information supporting the use of coagulation with the seeds from a local tree Moringa oleifera followed by slow sand filtration as a culturally appropriate, economically feasible, and environmentally sustainable solution for drinking water treatment in Shirati, Tanzania. Subsequently, Dr. Anant Kukreti, STEP PI, and Dr. Oerther took a team of three in-service teachers, one pre-service teacher, two graduate Fellows, one REU-supported undergraduate student, and one volunteer graduate student to Tanzania to provide professional development to elementary-primary school teachers in the village of Roche, Tanzania, through Project STEP.
The STEP team conducted a three-day professional development workshop for the teachers from Roche, Tanzania. They used four STEP lessons to show how inquiry-based and active learning techniques are used in developing and delivering STEP lessons. They explained lessons about animal cell components (using analogy of a village), virus attack (using analogy of “knot theory” in math), geometry to measuring heights of objects using a hand-made inclinometer, and effect of surface area on the rate of chemical reaction (as it relates to chewing and digestion). The participating teachers then met the STEP team members individually to discuss how they can take this experience back into their classroom. Four participating teachers developed and taught their own lessons using the concepts learnt in the workshop, which were observed and evaluated. Finally, the STEP team discussed with the participating teachers ideas for four lessons on health ad nutrition to bring back to their classrooms in the US to showcase their experience in Tanzania. Math Skills Test and Student Learning Styles Survey were conducted to evaluate the impact on student learning and to know how students in Tanzania prefer to learn.
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