MASTER TEACHER FELLOWSHIP PROJECT - DR TERESA HARRIS
Background about the program:
John Therry Catholic College has been running the Amgen Biotechnology Experience (ABE) in selected classes since 2019. This program involves completing a genetic engineering experiment but in a school laboratory setting. This exposure to a real life cutting edge technique gives students valuable experience and encourages them to consider a future career in science, whilst also addressing key syllabus outcomes. Amgen also runs a Master Teacher Fellowship Program for teachers with the aim of forming connections with a worldwide network of scientists participating in the program and creating additional resources related to the ABE program to improve student engagement and outcomes.
Project description:
In 2022-2023, Dr Harris participated in the ABE Master Teacher Fellowship Program. She applied for the Master Teacher Fellowship for a new challenge; to further her knowledge about biotechnology and to create a resource to help her senior students. The topic she chose was real world applications of genetic technologies. She chose this topic as it was an area of weakness in HSC Biology students so she felt that it needed a new resource and teaching sequence that provided a clear outline of each technology, examples to draw upon and in depth analysis of the associated social/economic/ethical and environmental issues that can arise with the use of these technologies. She collaborated with scientists and staff from the US to create a new series of learning pathways and accompanying worksheets on the online learning platform, LabXchange. This teaching sequence covers a large section of the Module 6 Genetic Change module for HSC Biology, and could also be used in HSC Investigating Science. After completing this series of lessons, students rated their knowledge of these areas as high, showing a definite improvement in understanding of this content. To further extend students, she also organised the Biotechnology conference held in May this year which included 5 guest speakers from The University of Sydney.
Dr Harris really enjoyed the international collaboration and connections formed during this fellowship and was happy to have been able to produce a resource to help students excel in this area.
Example of learning pathways:
Example of scaffold:
