Gray - Underserved Populations in Science Education

Underserved Populations in Science Education: Enhancement Through Learning Community Participation A positive relationship between college anatomy students' achievement and academic language proficiency in the context of a learning community was studied. For many students the barrier to learning science is language. It was determined that a relationship exists between low academic language proficiency and lack of success among students, in particular failure among at-risk minority and language- minority students. The study involved students of Anatomy classes at a community college in Central California having a high percentage of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Students from each semester participated in the academic language proficiency and science achievement studies. A number of students enrolled in a Learning Community (LC) that included instruction in academic language in the context of the anatomy course content. Other students also participated in Peer-led Support (PLS) sessions. Several participated in a textbook use study and in a Cooperative-Learning (CL) study.