Enhancing Teacher and Student Understanding of Engineering in K-5 Bilingual Programs

工程学是每个人当地社区和日常活动的一部分，但小学课堂上往往没有学习工程学的机会。此外，很少有人知道教师和学生的工程概念如何与当地社区的语言和文化等方面有关。更多地了解这一点很重要，因为学生认为他们的个人文化与工程领域之间不匹配，这导致少数群体在该行业的代表性持续不足。这项混合方法的探索性研究将探讨如何在马萨诸塞州和波多黎各的小学双语教师工作理解的作用和技能的工程师在社会中。反过来，它将研究教师如何适应现有的工程课程，使这些活动和概念更容易为学生的文化和语言。该项目由发现研究preK-12计划（DRK-12）资助，旨在通过研究和开发创新资源，模型和工具，显着提高preK-12学生和教师的科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，这些研究和开发工作为拟议项目提供了理论和经验依据。与DRK-12计划的目标一致，该项目将促进对工程教育材料如何适应教师，学生和他们居住的社区特点的理解。此外，它对双语课堂的关注将为工程领域的特征及其在不同文化和社会中的作用带来新的视角。在三年的时间里，该小组将通过收集24名教师（每个地点12名）的数据来调查这些问题。数据将通过调查、访谈、教学实例讨论、教师课堂教学视频和教师教案等人工制品分析来收集。教师将作为一个专业的共同学习社区进行合作和运作，称为教学轮，通过参与和提供反馈同步在面对面的设置和通过使用数字应用程序。项目的研究结果可以导致教学指导方针，实践和简报，通知努力成功地整合双语工程课程在小学年级。这项工作也有可能为双语课程的K-5教师创造成功的专业发展模式，并加强这些早期年级的工程教学策略和方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Engineering is part of everyone's local community and daily activities yet opportunities to learn about engineering are often absent from elementary school classrooms. Further, little is known about how teachers' and students' conceptions of engineering relate to aspects of their local community such as language and culture. Knowing more about this is important because students' perceptions of mismatch between their personal culture and the engineering field contributes to the continued underrepresentation of minorities in the profession. This mixed-method exploratory study will examine how bilingual teachers working in elementary schools in Massachusetts and Puerto Rico understand the role and skills of engineers in society. In turn, it will examine how teachers adapt existing engineering lessons so that those activities and concepts are more culturally and linguistically accessible to their students. This project is funded by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12), which seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. Consistent with the aims of the DRK-12 program, this project will advance understanding of how engineering education materials can be adapted to the characteristics of teachers, students, and the communities that they reside in. Further, its focus on bilingual classrooms will bring new perspectives to characterizations of the engineering field and its role in different cultures and societies. Over a three-year period, the team will investigate these issues by collecting data from 24 teachers (12 from each location). Data will be collected via surveys, interviews, discussion of instructional examples, videos of teachers' classroom instruction and analysis of artifacts such as teachers' lesson plans. Teachers will collaborate and function as a professional co-learning community called instructional rounds by participating and providing feedback synchronously in face-to-face settings and via the use of digital apps. Project findings can lead to teaching guidelines, practices, and briefs that inform efforts to successfully integrate bilingual engineering curriculum at the elementary grades. This work also has the potential to create professional development models of success for K-5 teachers in bilingual programs and enhance engineering teaching strategies and methods at these early grade levels.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.