Engineering for US All - E4USA: A National Pilot High School Engineering Course and Database

美国大学理事会目前每年通过AP和SAT为700万学生、2.3万所高中和3600所大学提供服务。然而，对于大学预科的学生来说，没有标准化的教育计划来获得广泛接受的、可转移的工程课程学分。此外，没有国家提供的专业发展计划来培训和认证高素质的中学教师，以支持大学预科阶段的本科水平的工程课程。“面向所有人的工程”（E4USA）是一门为期一年的高中课程，它有可能通过让高中生和他们的老师像工程师一样思考和实践工程原理和设计实践，使工程的学习和实践“民主化”。E4USA相当于大学入门课程的学分，例如：1)核心工程；或2)选修课；或3)通识教育顺序中的替代必修课。其影响很可能超越E4USA学分，通过对广泛的STEM培训教师进行认证，指导和评估工程原理和基于设计的经验，从而成为支持引入下一代科学标准（NGSS）中概述的工程原理和设计的基石。E4USA框架将聚焦于三个“大理念”：1)工程与社会；2)工程流程；3)基本工程内容、技能和工具。学生将通过两个综合途径获得学分：1)涵盖工程原理的标准基础课程；2)提交设计方案。全国试点将由马里兰大学帕克分校领导，包括亚利桑那州立大学、摩根州立大学、范德比尔特大学、弗吉尼亚理工大学、与美国宇航局的传播合作，以及美国各地约70所高中的抽样。全民工程（E4USA）将有助于“去神秘化”和“民主化”工程，并使科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）教师获得自我效能感、自信和技能，以教授和评估学生的工程基础能力。目前在国家层面上还没有标准化的课程来培训和认证高中教师，以支持一年的基于工程原理和设计经验的高中课程。我们提议的国家试点将使来自美国各地的数据收集标准化和集中化，从而通过基于能力的评估和设计项目提交来跟踪STEM教师及其学生学习工程概念的轨迹。马里兰大学将建立并更新一个全国性的数据库，以跟踪教师及其学生的培训情况。该研究将探讨：1)更广泛的学生是否会将工程作为学术和职业选择；2)专业发展（PD）可以使教师在STEM学科中应用工程概念，培养学生解决问题的能力；3) PD模式的试点可以用来认证高素质的教师。预计成果将包括：1)混合（例如，面对面和在线）PD模式，使STEM教师获得信心，教学技能和评估能力，以支持E4USA；2)使用学习管理系统和在线分析工具从教师、学生、机构和高中的不同抽样中收集数据的指南；3) E4USA课程教材和资源；4) E4USA模式，可以与州和地方高中毕业要求保持一致。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The College Board currently serves 7 million students, 23,000 high schools, and 3,600 colleges through the AP and SAT annually. However, no standardized educational program exists for pre-college students to earn widely accepted, transferable, engineering course credits. In addition, there are no nationally offered professional development programs to train and certify highly qualified, secondary teachers to support an undergraduate-level engineering course at the pre-college level. An Engineering for US All (E4USA), one-year high school course has the potential to 'democratize' the learning and practice of engineering by engaging high school students and their teachers to think and practice engineering principles and design practices, like an engineer. E4USA would be equivalent to placement credit for an introductory college course, such as: 1) core engineering; or 2) an elective; or 3) a substitute required course in the general education sequence. The impact might well go beyond an E4USA credit, through the credentialing of a broad range of STEM trained teachers to instruct and assess engineering principles and design-based experiences, and therefore become cornerstones supporting the introduction of engineering principles and design as outlined in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The E4USA framework will focus on three "big ideas:" 1) Engineering and Society; 2) Engineering Processes; and 3) Essential Engineering Content, Skills and Tools. Credit would be earned by students through two integrated pathways: 1) a standard's based curriculum covering the Principles of Engineering; and 2) a submission of a design project. The national pilot will be lead by the University of Maryland College Park and include Arizona State University, Morgan State University, Vanderbilt University, Virginia Tech, a dissemination collaboration with NASA, and a sampling of some 70 high schools across the United States.Engineering for US All (E4USA) would help to 'demystify' and 'democratize' engineering, and empower science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers to gain the self-efficacy, self-confidence and skills to teach and assess their students engineering-based competencies. No standardized programs currently exist at a national level to train and certify high school teachers to support a one-year high school course based on engineering principles and a design-based experience. Our proposed national pilot would enable the standardized and centralization of data collection from across the United States, thus tracking STEM teachers and their students' trajectories of learning engineering concepts through competency-based evaluations and design project submissions. A national, data repository will be created and updated at the University of Maryland to track the training of the teachers, and their students. The research will explore if: 1) a broader diversity of students will consider engineering as an academic and career option; 2) professional development (PD) can enable teachers to apply engineering concepts across STEM disciplines to train students to tackle and solve problems; and 3) the piloting of the PD models can be used to certify highly qualified teachers. Projected outcomes will include: 1) a hybrid (e.g., in-person and online) PD model that prepares STEM teachers to gain the confidence, instructional skills and assessment competencies to support E4USA; 2) guidelines for the use of a Learning Management Systems and on-line analytical tools to collect data from a diverse sampling of teachers, students, institutions, and high schools; 3) E4USA course materials and resources; and 4) E4USA models that can be aligned to state and local high school graduation requirements.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.