Integrating Science Content and Engineering Thinking in the Elementary Classroom

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With funding from the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program, the Integrating Science Content and Engineering Thinking in the Elementary Classroom Project will recruit Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics majors and professionals and prepare them to become elementary teachers. The project will fund 10 stipends per year over five years, resulting in the preparation of 50 elementary science teachers. In this project, the University of Massachusetts at Boston will collaborate with two Boston public elementary schools and the Conservatory Lab School to build on the idea of engineering design process as a teaching-learning approach that can be used to promote science learning. Teaching through engineering design has the potential to facilitate integrated instruction that meets the requirements of the new science education standards. Design-based learning can help students develop scientific inquiry and real world problem-solving skills, enhance discipline-specific content knowledge and critical thinking skills, and promote interest in science or engineering careers. This project will advance knowledge and understanding in the area of STEM teacher preparation at the elementary level by preparing elementary teachers to use engineering practices, integrated with science content, to teach science to elementary-aged children. Project outcomes will help determine the effectiveness of recent reforms in K-12 education, particularly those that call for the integration of engineering with science education, and will integrate the practices of science and engineering with didactic content. There are very few elementary teacher preparation programs that focus exclusively on preparing elementary teachers to teach STEM content. Built into the proposed teacher preparation program are two new assessments for tracking the ability of teachers to integrate engineering and science content in the elementary classroom, the Video Case Diagnosis and the Curriculum Critique and Revision tools. With its focus on STEM at the elementary level, this unique program will utilize these two tools to determine the effectiveness of STEM integration for building science content knowledge for elementary students.