Research: Practices of Engineers in Rural Schools Involving Students and Teachers (PERSIST) in Engineering

为了应对未来复杂的全球挑战，必须招聘和留住一支更加多元化的工程师队伍。来自农村地区的学生通常在玩耍、在农场工作或为日常问题设计解决方案时获得STEM技能，但目前的教育体系往往无法帮助这些学生将他们所从事的工程与作为潜在职业的工程联系起来。因此，农村学生构成了一个重要的人口，可以增加能够解决这些问题的工程师的多样性和数量，但这些学校的教师很少有工程经验，很难向学生教授工程。为了应对最近的STEM教育改革，包括要求小学课堂教授工程，正在制定课程和专业发展机会，以帮助学校进行这些改革。但是，教师学习和随后教授工程学的方式一直没有得到充分的研究。该项目的研究结果将用于向教师教育工作者提出具体和普遍的建议，以促进为农村中级教师举办的工程专业发展讲习班，并向教师提出如何利用当地相关问题和课堂项目帮助学生学习工程并将工程视为一种可行和令人满意的职业选择的建议。工程研究表明，内容和实践是通过参与工程项目的学生和教师之间的社会互动来学习的，这些项目位于复杂的课堂文化中。来自科学与学校中心的教师和一名stem教育研究生将系统地跟踪三位案例研究教师，他们来自一个小的农村学区，在两个教师研讨会上学习和做工程项目，然后在他们的教室里实施这些项目，使用当地的知识基金，并专注于让学生参与工程师的认知实践，以增加学生的学习，兴趣和兴奋。目前正在采用混合方法综合定性和定量数据的结果。通过其他资助项目开发的心理测量工具，采用定量方法更好地了解理工科学习和学生兴趣。然而，社会文化视角需要互动民族志的定性方法来原位研究这些过程。案例之间和案例内部的课堂和研讨会视频、访谈、反思性期刊和工作文物的定性分析将用于推动宾夕法尼亚农村地区STEM生态系统的大学前工程教育工作者、从业者、州政府官员和参与者的传播。除了三位案例研究教师外，还将邀请42位来自农村、服务不足学校的教师参加研讨会，并将形成一个在线实践社区，旨在支持他们在中等水平课堂上实施工程项目，这可能会在未来几年影响数千名学生。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。

A more diverse group of engineers must be recruited and retained in order to address complex global challenges in the future. Students from rural areas often acquire STEM skills as they play, work on farms, or design solutions to day-to-day problems, but the current educational system often fails to help these students make connections between the engineering they do and engineering as a potential career. Rural students, therefore make up a significant population that can add to the diversity and numbers of engineers able to address these problems, but teachers in these schools rarely have experience with engineering, and struggle to teach engineering to students. In response to recent reforms in STEM education, including mandates for elementary classrooms to teach engineering, curriculum and professional development opportunities are being developed to help schools in these reforms. But the ways teachers learn about, and subsequently teach, engineering has been understudied. The findings of this project will be used to make specific and generalizable recommendations to teacher educators about facilitating engineering professional development workshops for rural, middle-level teachers and to teachers about how to use locally relevant problems and classroom projects to help students learn about engineering and view engineering as a viable and fulfilling career option. Engineering studies suggest that content and practices are learned through social interactions among students and teachers participating in engineering projects situated within a complex classroom culture. Faculty from the Center for Science and the Schools and a STEM-education graduate student will systematically follow three case study teachers from one small, rural school district in situ as they learn and do engineering projects in two teacher workshops and then in their classrooms as they implement these projects in their classrooms, using local funds of knowledge and focusing on engaging students in the epistemic practices of engineers to increase student learning, interest and excitement. A mixed-methods approach is being used to synthesize the findings of both qualitative and quantitative data. Quantitative methods are employed to better understand science and engineering learning and student interest using psychometric instruments developed through other funded projects. However, the sociocultural perspective requires qualitative methods of interactional ethnography to study these processes in situ. Between and within case qualitative analyses of classroom and workshop video, interviews, reflective journals, and work artifacts will be used to drive dissemination to precollege engineering educators, practitioners, state government officials, and participants in a STEM ecosystem for rural areas in Pennsylvania. In addition to the three case study teachers, 42 teacher from rural, underserved schools will be invited to participate in the workshops and will form an online community of practice aimed to support their ongoing implementation of engineering projects in their middle level classrooms, potentially impacting thousands of students over the next several years.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.