Engineering and Education Partnership: Preparing the Next Generation of Cross Disciplinary Trained STEM Teachers

工程与教育合作：培养下一代跨学科培训的 STEM 教师

• 批准号: 1525816
• 负责人: Thomas Siller
• 金额: $ 59.26万
• 依托单位: Colorado State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1525816&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Engineering; Education; Partnership; Preparing; Next

When the preparation of the next generation of STEM teachers is discussed in education circles, few think of teachers earning an engineering degree as a pathway to entering the teaching profession. Teachers prepared with an engineering degree are well equipped to help young learners "connect the STEM dots" through design, problem solving, experimentation, making, and understanding the balance between the designed and natural world in which they live. STEM learning is often abstract and STEM subjects are too often taught in isolation without reference and meaningful connections. This project broadens the STEM learning landscape by emphasizing integrated STEM (iSTEM) teacher preparation that includes integrated design (iDesign) across STEM subjects by not only preparing a new breed of engineering trained teachers, but also by redesigning the traditional STEM teacher preparation model to include cross STEM discipline teacher preparation that emphasizes content border crossings and prepares teachers to work in cross functional diversity teams in schools. The project will result in the integration of new design projects in the engineering curricula for pre-service STEM teachers and a new cross-discipline STEM methods course that will serve as a model for other institutions to adopt. Thus, it will make a substantive contribution to improving undergraduate education.Preparing teachers through an engineering degree pathway and cross-training STEM teachers opens a whole new perspective to STEM teaching, learning, and research. Research conducted in this project is designed to unpack and measure two new inventive frontiers in STEM learning; 1) STEM associational fluency and 2) teaching and learning in cross-functional STEM diversity teams. STEM associational fluency in teachers is the teacher's ability to fluidly and deeply apply STEM content and contexts while designing and delivering instruction. Scales designed and tested include the expansion and refinement of an iSTEM scale to measure STEM associational fluency in teachers. Teaching and learning in cross functional design teams incorporates teams of STEM teachers from the varied STEM disciplines learning to blueprint (make explicit) disciplinary grounded content, co-plan, and design integrated design (iDesign) interventions that require students to apply cross cutting STEM content, concepts, and practices within a design or problem-based learning context. A new iDesign scale to measure and assess teachers' cross-functional iDesign interventions will be designed and tested. Other colleges and schools of engineering seeking to open up career pathways for their students will have benefit of the research, tools and strategies generated through this project. Ultimately, making engineering undergraduate students aware of the possibility of a teaching career at the K-12 level will have profound impact on the number and quality of teachers of STEM disciplines at the pre-college level in the future.

当教育界讨论下一代STEM教师的准备时，很少有人认为获得工程学学位是进入教师职业的途径。拥有工程学学位的教师做好了充分的准备，可以通过设计、解决问题、实验、制作和理解设计世界与他们生活的自然世界之间的平衡来帮助年轻学习者“连接STEM点”。STEM的学习往往是抽象的，STEM科目往往被孤立地教授，没有参考和有意义的联系。该项目通过强调综合STEM(ISTEM)教师培训拓宽了STEM的学习版图，其中包括跨STEM学科的集成设计(IDesign)，不仅通过培养受过工程培训的新一代STEM教师，而且通过重新设计传统的STEM教师培训模式，使其包括跨STEM学科的教师培训，该培训强调内容边界的跨越，并为教师在学校跨职能多样化团队中的工作做好准备。该项目将导致将新的设计项目纳入任职前STEM教师的工程课程，以及一个新的跨学科STEM方法课程，该课程将成为其他机构采用的典范。因此，它将为改善本科教育做出实质性贡献。通过工程学位途径培养教师，并对STEM教师进行交叉培训，为STEM的教学、学习和研究打开了一个全新的视角。本项目的研究旨在揭示和测量STEM学习中的两个新的创新前沿：1)STEM联想流畅性；2)跨职能STEM多样性团队的教与学。教师的STEM联想流利性是指教师在设计和提供教学时流畅而深入地应用STEM内容和语境的能力。设计和测试的量表包括对iSTEM量表的扩展和改进，以测量教师的STEM联想流畅性。跨职能设计团队的教与学包括来自不同STEM学科的STEM教师团队，他们学习制定(明确)以学科为基础的内容、共同计划和设计集成设计(IDesign)干预措施，要求学生在设计或基于问题的学习环境中应用交叉STEM内容、概念和实践。将设计和测试一种新的iDesign量表来衡量和评估教师的跨职能iDesign干预。其他寻求为他们的学生开辟职业道路的工程学院将受益于通过该项目产生的研究、工具和战略。最终，让工科本科生意识到在K-12水平从事教学工作的可能性，将对未来STEM学科大学前阶段教师的数量和质量产生深远影响。