EAGER: New possibilities for broadening the impacts of middle school engineering through a partnership between teachers and underrepresented minority engineering college students

许多学校将工程设计任务纳入科学课程，作为一种方式，为中学生提供机会，为寻找现实世界问题的解决方案做出贡献。然而，就读于高需求学校的学生往往很少有机会做出这样的贡献。这种情况的存在是因为有时高需求学校的教师很难创造出学生有足够信心参与工程设计过程的学习环境。这一探索性项目将通过研究中学教师与工科本科生配对是否会增加教师创造这种学习环境的能力来解决这个问题。它将使用协作孵化器模型来检查配对互动，并记录何时以及在什么条件下可能发生知识创造和转移。这项研究将解决文献中的一个空白，在这些文献中，很少有研究从这个角度明确地看待本科工程师的使用。它将开启一条途径，加深对如何提高教师知识和技能的理解，使他们能够独立开展这些类型的活动。案例研究设计将通过访谈、课堂观察、视频、录音和有声思考协议来获取有关该项目的信息。来自这些数据来源的信息将促进对先前经验、个人信念和促进高需求学校工程设计任务的方法的理解。不同的数据分析策略将被用来为教师和工科本科生建立一个基线，通过研究对象的配对来最大限度地提高设计过程中的潜力。具体地说，当配对成员的默会知识结合在一起产生脚手架问题和方向时，话语分析将被用来编码实例，这些问题和方向在设计过程的每个阶段都能促进创造性的问题解决。这一步骤也将被用来证实口头侧写分析，并选择突出教师和工科本科生之间示范性合作的案例。它将进一步帮助跟踪随着时间的推移配对中的文化、语言和规范的变化。结果将包括关于在教师与工程专业的学生配对中是否可能发生有意义的知识和技能转移的信息，这种方式丰富了课堂层面的变化。这一奖项反映了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。

Many schools include engineering design tasks in the science curriculum as one way to provide opportunities for middle school students to contribute to finding solutions to real-world problems. However, students who attend high needs schools often have few opportunities to make such contributions. This condition exists because sometimes teachers in high needs schools have difficulty creating learning environments where students feel confident enough to engage in the engineering design process. This exploratory project will address this issue by looking at whether pairing middle school teachers with undergraduate engineering students increases teachers' capacity to create this type of learning environment. It will use a collaborative incubator model to examine pair interactions and document when and under what conditions knowledge creation and transfer might take place. The study will address a gap in the literature where few studies have expressly looked at the use of undergraduate engineers from this viewpoint. It will initiate the development of a pathway towards a deeper understanding about how to improve teachers' knowledge and skills such that they can implement these types of activities on their own. A case study design will capture information about the project through interviews, classroom observations, videos, audio recordings, and think-aloud protocols. Information from these data sources will advance understanding regarding prior experiences, individual beliefs and approaches about facilitating engineering design tasks in high needs schools. Different strategies for analyzing data will be used to establish a baseline for teachers and undergraduate engineering students to maximize potential growth with respect to the design process through pairing of the study subjects. Specifically, discourse analysis will be used to code instances when tacit knowledge of pair members combines to produce scaffolding questions and directions that promote creative problem solving during each stage of the design process. This step will also be used to corroborate verbal profile analysis and select cases that highlight exemplary collaborations between teachers and undergraduate engineering students. It will further help track changes in culture, language, and norms within the pairing over time. Outcomes will include information about whether meaningful transfer of knowledge and skills might occur within teacher-engineering student pairing in contextually rich ways that inform change at the classroom level.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.