Exploring changes in teachers' engineering design self-efficacy and practice through collaborative and culturally-relevant professional development

在小学和中学阶段促进工程设计教育的多样化、包容性和公平参与是很重要的，原因有很多。除了多样化的STEM劳动力对工业和经济的好处之外，青年能够更好地做出关于追求STEM学位和STEM职业道路的明智决定，青年能够培养批判性思维和解决问题的技能，使他们能够成为创造性和创新的问题解决者。然而，为了让青少年在小学和中学环境中参与包容和公平的工程设计体验，教师需要有机会发展工程内容知识、教学内容知识和文化相关教学策略。在这个项目中，来自北达科他大学的研究人员开发、评估并实施了一个正在进行的、合作的专业发展计划，该计划旨在支持教师向农村和美洲原住民社区的5 -8年级学生教授工程设计。该项目促进了对K-12工程教育教师培训的理解，更具体地说，是对5 -8年级学生文化相关的工程设计教育的理解。课程设计以Bandura的社会学习理论、Gladson-Billing的文化相关教学和Gay的文化响应教学为指导原则。该项目结合了以前工程教育专业发展中有前途但往往是孤立的元素，为教师提供a)教学和内容知识，b)包括土著学生的文化相关教学法，c)支持性专业学习社区，d)在实际课堂中实施的基于项目的工程问题示例，e)扩展的脚手架实践与他们自己的课堂工程任务，f)持续的支持。该项目是为农村和部落学校的教师设计的，课程材料是与社区意见合作开发的，专门针对他们社区的独特需求。在多元化顾问委员会的指导下，项目研究团队将以调查、访谈和录像观察的形式收集定量和定性数据，以确定该项目是否以及如何影响课堂工程教学和教学法，以及参与教师的能力感和自我效能感。通过本项目创建的课堂工程任务，特别是那些专门针对美洲原住民和农村学生群体开发的任务，将通过项目网站、教学实践期刊和教师会议推广并提供给其他教师。探索研究preK-12项目（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高preK-12学生和教师对科学、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实证依据。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。

Promoting diverse, inclusive and equitable participation in engineering design education at the elementary and middle school levels is important for a number of reasons. In addition to benefits of a diverse STEM workforce to industry and the economy, youth are better able to make informed decisions about pursuing STEM degrees and STEM career pathways and youth are able to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills that allow them to be creative and innovative problem solvers. However, for youth to participate in inclusive and equitable engineering design experiences in elementary and middle schools settings, teachers need opportunities to develop engineering content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and strategies for culturally-relevant teaching. In this project, investigators from the University of North Dakota develop, evaluate, and implement an on-going, collaborative professional development program designed to support teachers in teaching engineering design to 5th-8th grade students in rural and Native American communities. The project advances the understanding of teacher training in K-12 engineering education and more specifically culturally-relevant engineering design education for 5th-8th grade students. The program design is guided by principles from Bandura's Social Learning Theory, Gladson-Billing’s culturally-relevant teaching, and Gay’s cultural-responsive teaching. The project combines promising, but often isolated, elements from previous engineering education professional development to give teachers a) pedagogical and content knowledge, b) culturally-relevant pedagogy that is inclusive of indigenous students, c) a supportive professional learning community, d) examples of project-based engineering problems implemented in real classrooms, e) extended scaffolded practice with their own classroom engineering tasks, and f) on-going support. The program is designed for teachers in rural and tribal schools with curricular materials developed collaboratively with community input to specifically address their community's unique needs. The project research team, guided by a diverse advisory board, will collect both quantitative and qualitative data in the forms of surveys, interviews, and videotaped observations to determine if and how the project is affecting classroom engineering instruction and pedagogy, as well as the sense of competence and self-efficacy of the teacher participants. The classroom engineering tasks created through this project, especially those developed to be specifically relevant to Native American and rural student populations, will be promoted and made available to other teachers through a project website, teaching practice journals, and teacher conferences.The Discovery Research preK-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.