# EMPOWER: Enacting Materials to Promote OWnership, Engagement and Relevance

> **NIH NIH R25** · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO · 2024 · $242,167

## Abstract

EMPOWER: Enacting Materials to Promote OWnership, Engagement and Relevance
EMPOWER (Enacting Materials to Promote OWnership, Engagement and Relevance) is an ambitious
program that empowers students to enact change in their local community. The introduction of the Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS) across the United States has spurred numerous efforts to
design and disseminate NGSS-aligned curriculum materials. NGSS-aligned curriculum materials aim to
shift science instruction away from rote memorization and toward the active co-construction of ideas by
teachers and students. However, these curriculum materials often do not address the persistent, and
problematic relationships between race, class, and health and environmental factors that minoritized
students of color face in their communities. The goal of the EMPOWER program is to prepare teachers
to adapt and enact curriculum materials to address and respond to issues of sociopolitical relevance, so
that students will be engaged, interested, and empowered to enact change in their local community.
 In the EMPOWER program, we will work with a cohort of teachers (~40) in 3 core partner school
districts who have committed to using NGSS-aligned units as part of their middle school science
curriculum. Our theory of action is that supporting teachers’ understanding of their students, their local
teaching contexts, and the curriculum materials will result in shifts in 1) teachers’ views of effective
science teaching, 2) teachers’ capacity to adapt curriculum materials to address local issues, and 3)
students’ sense of ownership and engagement in science learning. These shifts are mediated by 2
years of professional learning (PL) activities across two contexts: participation in 1) week-long summer
workshops, and 2) ongoing cycles of enactment and reflection during the academic year. In the
summer workshops, teachers will investigate the environmental and health issues in students’ local
community and use this knowledge to adapt the curriculum to directly connect science learning to these
issues. During the academic year, teachers will engage in multiple cycles of enactment and reflection
on the adapted lesson with researchers and their district colleagues. Across these two contexts,
artifacts, surveys and video recordings will be used to study shifts in teacher’s beliefs and adaptive
expertise with curriculum materials, as well as students’ participation in science learning. In Year 3, we
will work with a subset of teachers in each cohort (~20) to co-develop an open source video case
library of curricular adaptations that promote students’ ownership, engagement, and participation. The
research activities of the EMPOWER program will result in the development of an open source video
case library that documents how curriculum enactments empower students to address human and
environmental health issues in their community.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10922754
- **Project number:** 5R25GM142056-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
- **Principal Investigator:** Monlin Monica Ko
- **Activity code:** R25 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $242,167
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-09-20 → 2027-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10922754

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10922754, EMPOWER: Enacting Materials to Promote OWnership, Engagement and Relevance (5R25GM142056-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10922754. Licensed CC0.

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