5E instructional model

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) is an educational center that develops curricular materials, provides educational support, and conducts research and evaluation in the fields of science and technology. It was formed in 1958, and became an independent non-profit organization in 1973, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Soon after receiving a National Science Foundation grant in 1958, the American Institute of Biological Sciences established the base for BSCS activities at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Arnold Grobman, a herpetologist, served as the first director of BSCS, from 1958 until 1965. Hiram Bentley Glass, a geneticist, chaired the first Steering Committee (later the Board) from 1959 until 1965. The BSCS leadership during its first decade of operation was mainly made up of professional biologists. These professional biologists worked with high school educators and administrators to develop and implement new curriculum materials.

During the first Steering Committee meetings in 1959, the BSCS decided to target high school biology, mainly at the tenth-grade level, for improvement. In the summer of 1960, the BSCS convened an intensive summer writing conference in Boulder, at which three new high school biology textbooks were developed. The three versions were: Blue, a molecular biology approach; Green, an ecology approach; and Yellow, a cellular biology approach. These three versions, and their corresponding newly developed laboratory exercises, were piloted at high schools around the United States during the 1960-61 school year. The curriculum materials were then revised during the summer of 1961 based on feedback from teachers, students and professional biologists, and tested again during 1961-62. In 1963, the three textbook versions were published commercially.

All three BSCS curriculum versions stressed key biological themes, such as science as inquiry, the complementarity of structure and function, genetic continuity and evolution. The BSCS textbooks emphasized evolution as a major scientific theory at a time when it was largely omitted from existing high school curricula, and the BSCS organization has remained committed to the teaching of evolution since its inception.

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