Integrating Engineering & Literacy

综合工程与识字（IEL）项目正在开发和测试课程材料和专业发展模式，旨在通过基于流行儿童文学故事的设计挑战，探索在3 - 5年级引入工程概念的潜力。塔夫茨大学的项目研发团队正在与职前教师合作，为学生和教师专业发展模式设计和测试课程模块。然后，在马萨诸塞州不同学校的100名在职教师和他们的学生中对该计划进行测试和完善。研究团队假设，采用跨学科的方法，结合文献与工程设计挑战，对小学教师进行专业发展，将增加3-5个教室的工程实施，并对学生产生积极影响。本研究提出的驱动问题是：(1)教师的工程（和STEM）内容知识、教学内容知识和对工程的看法或态度如何通过读写影响他们的工程课堂教学？(2)教师是否对工程设计过程有自己的个人概念，这些概念是什么样的？(3)通过将工程活动融入到学生的阅读和写作中，学生培养了哪些工程/阅读思维技能？课程材料和教师专业发展模型是由设计研究策略制作的，该策略使用开发/测试/改进工作的周期。该计划的效果正在通过学生和教师学习和实践的各种措施进行评估。该计划将提供材料和研究成果，以了解如何为小学生提供有意义的学习工程的机会，并培养有价值的解决问题和思考能力。

The Integrating Engineering and Literacy (IEL) project is developing and testing curriculum materials and a professional development model designed to explore the potential for introducing engineering concepts in grades 3 - 5 through design challenges based on stories in popular children's literature. The project research and development team at Tufts University is working with pre-service teachers to design and test the curriculum modules for students and the teacher professional development model. Then the program is tested and refined in work with 100 in-service teachers and their students in a diverse set of Massachusetts schools. The research team hypothesizes that professional development for elementary teachers using an interdisciplinary method for combining literature with engineering design challenges will increase the implementation of engineering in 3-5 classrooms and have positive impacts on students. The driving questions behind this proposed research are: (1) How do teachers' engineering (and STEM) content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and perceptions or attitudes toward engineering influence their classroom teaching of engineering through literacy? (2) Do teachers create their own personal conceptions of the engineering design process, and what do these conceptions look like? (3) What engineering/reading thinking skills are students developing by participating in engineering activities integrated into their reading and writing work? The curriculum materials and teacher professional development model are being produced by a design research strategy that uses cycles of develop/test/refine work. The effects of the program are being evaluated by a variety of measures of student and teacher learning and practice.The project will contribute materials and research findings to the ultimate goal of understanding how to provide elementary school students with meaningful opportunities to learn engineering and develop valuable problem solving and thinking skills.