Ed+gineering: An Interdisciplinary Partnership Integrating Engineering into Elementary Teacher Preparation Programs

工程教育的重点是开发相关问题的创造性解决方案，是一种很有前途的提高小学生对科学领域的兴趣的途径。尽管工程教育很有潜力，但它经常没有出现在小学课堂上，因为许多教师觉得没有做好充分准备，无法将其融入到教学中。这个项目通过本科生基础教育课程的创新方法来解决这个问题。在这种被称为Ed Gineering的方法中，本科基础教育专业的学生与本科工程专业的学生合作，在校外环境中为小学生开发和教授工程学课程。在这个项目中，500多名基础教育专业的学生将与工程专业的学生合作，向来自代表性不足群体的1600多名学生教授工程设计。这些基于标准的课程将强调学生提问、建设性的学生对学生的互动和工程设计过程，并将根据学生的兴趣和优势进行量身定做。研究小组将研究教育工程是否与基础教育专业的积极结果相关。他们还将研究基础教育专业的学生是否以及如何在他们获得执照的第一年提供工程学指导。该项目将通过产生一种教师教育模式来促进知识的发展，这种模式有可能提高未来小学教师教授工程学的信心和能力。反过来，更多的小学生可能会有机会体验工程，因为他们发现如何利用创新的科学应用来解决他们周围世界的问题。老道明大学的研究人员将研究教师培养模式是否与职前教师在本科生和专业教师第一年的积极成果有关。本科基础教育专业和本科工程专业的学生将在各自学科项目的最多三门必修大学课程中，以跨学科团队的形式工作，由四到六人组成。每学期，这些跨学科团队将在四、五或六年级未被充分代表的学生参加的实地考察或课后项目中，开发和教授一门与文化相呼应的、以工程为基础的课程，并附带学生材料。使用带有处理和匹配的对照组的准实验设计，研究人员将确定教师准备模式是否与工程知识的增加、对工程集成的信念、工程集成的自我效能以及工程集成的意图相关联，这是由现有的已验证工具以及将由研究团队调整和验证的新工具确定的。此外，研究人员将通过调查、访谈和课堂观察来跟踪项目参与者，以确定他们是否以及如何在他们成为合格教师的第一年提供工程学指导。对这些数据的持续比较分析将指出参与教育工程项目的初任教师在工程教学方面的障碍和促进因素。这个项目将产生一个基于经验的教师培养模型，一个工程整合的预测性统计模型，经过实地测试的工程教案和经过验证的工具，并将广泛传播给利益相关者。探索研究K-12计划(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高K-12学前班学生和教师的科学、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，为拟议的项目提供了理论和经验上的证明。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Engineering education, with its emphasis on developing creative solutions to relevant problems, is a promising approach to increasing elementary students' interest in scientific fields. Despite its potential, engineering education is often absent from elementary classes because many teachers feel underprepared to integrate it into their instruction. This project addresses this issue through an innovative approach to undergraduate elementary education programs. In this approach, called Ed+gineering, undergraduate elementary education majors team with undergraduate engineering majors to develop and teach engineering lessons to elementary students in out-of-school settings. In this project, over 500 elementary education majors will team with engineering majors to teach engineering design to over 1,600 students from underrepresented groups. These standards-based lessons will emphasize student questioning, constructive student-to-student interactions, and engineering design processes, and they will be tailored to build from students' interests and strengths. The research team will study whether Ed+gineering is correlated with positive outcomes for the elementary education majors. They will also study whether and how the elementary education majors subsequently provide engineering instruction during their first year of licensed teaching. This project will advance knowledge by resulting in a model for teacher education that has the potential to improve future elementary teachers' confidence and ability to teach engineering. In turn, more elementary students may have opportunities to experience engineering as they discover how innovative applications of science can be used to solve problems in the world around them. Researchers at Old Dominion University will study whether a teacher preparation model is associated with positive outcomes for pre-service teachers while they are undergraduates and in their first year as professional teachers. Undergraduate elementary education majors and undergraduate engineering majors will work in interdisciplinary teams, comprised of four to six people, in up to three mandatory collegiate courses in their respective disciplinary programs. Each semester, these interdisciplinary teams will develop and teach a culturally responsive, engineering-based lesson with accompanying student materials during a field trip or after-school program attended by underrepresented students in fourth, fifth, or sixth grade. Using a quasi-experimental design with treatment and matched comparison groups, researchers will identify whether the teacher preparation model is associated with increased knowledge of engineering, beliefs about engineering integration, self-efficacy for engineering integration, and intention to integrate engineering, as determined by existing validated instruments as well as by new instruments that will be adapted and validated by the research team. Additionally, the researchers will follow program participants using surveys, interviews, and classroom observations to determine whether and how they provide engineering instruction during their first year as licensed teachers. Constant comparative analyses of these data will indicate barriers and enablers to engineering instruction among beginning teachers who participated in the Ed+gineering program. This project will result in an empirically-based model of teacher preparation, a predictive statistical model of engineering integration, field-tested engineering lesson plans, and validated instruments that will be disseminated widely to stakeholders.The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) 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.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.