Engineering and Education Partnership: Preparing the Next Generation of Cross Disciplinary Trained STEM Teachers

当教育界讨论下一代STEM教师的准备时，很少有人认为教师获得工程学位是进入教师职业的途径。拥有工程学位的教师有能力帮助年轻的学习者通过设计，解决问题，实验，制作和理解他们生活的设计和自然世界之间的平衡来“连接STEM点”。 STEM学习往往是抽象的，STEM科目往往是孤立地教授的，没有参考和有意义的联系。该项目通过强调综合STEM（iSTEM）教师准备，包括跨STEM学科的综合设计（iDesign），不仅准备了一批新的工程培训教师，而且还通过重新设计传统的STEM教师准备模式，以包括跨STEM学科的教师准备，强调内容的跨界，并为教师在跨职能多样性团队中工作做好准备在学校里。该项目将导致新的设计项目整合到职前STEM教师的工程课程中，以及一个新的跨学科STEM方法课程，该课程将成为其他机构采用的模式。通过工程学位途径培养教师和交叉培训STEM教师，为STEM教学、学习和研究开辟了全新的视角。 在这个项目中进行的研究旨在解开和测量STEM学习的两个新的发明前沿; 1）STEM关联流畅性和2）跨职能STEM多样性团队的教学和学习。教师的STEM关联流畅性是教师在设计和提供教学时流畅和深入应用STEM内容和上下文的能力。设计和测试的量表包括iSTEM量表的扩展和改进，以衡量教师的STEM关联流畅性。跨职能设计团队的教学和学习包括来自不同STEM学科的STEM教师团队，学习蓝图（明确）学科接地内容，共同计划和设计集成设计（iDesign）干预措施，要求学生在设计或基于问题的学习环境中应用横切STEM内容，概念和实践。将设计和测试一个新的iDesign量表，以衡量和评估教师的跨职能iDesign干预措施。其他寻求为学生开辟职业道路的工程学院和学校将受益于通过该项目产生的研究，工具和策略。最终，使工程本科学生意识到在K-12水平的教学生涯的可能性将对未来大学预科阶段STEM学科教师的数量和质量产生深远的影响。

When the preparation of the next generation of STEM teachers is discussed in education circles, few think of teachers earning an engineering degree as a pathway to entering the teaching profession. Teachers prepared with an engineering degree are well equipped to help young learners "connect the STEM dots" through design, problem solving, experimentation, making, and understanding the balance between the designed and natural world in which they live. STEM learning is often abstract and STEM subjects are too often taught in isolation without reference and meaningful connections. This project broadens the STEM learning landscape by emphasizing integrated STEM (iSTEM) teacher preparation that includes integrated design (iDesign) across STEM subjects by not only preparing a new breed of engineering trained teachers, but also by redesigning the traditional STEM teacher preparation model to include cross STEM discipline teacher preparation that emphasizes content border crossings and prepares teachers to work in cross functional diversity teams in schools. The project will result in the integration of new design projects in the engineering curricula for pre-service STEM teachers and a new cross-discipline STEM methods course that will serve as a model for other institutions to adopt. Thus, it will make a substantive contribution to improving undergraduate education.Preparing teachers through an engineering degree pathway and cross-training STEM teachers opens a whole new perspective to STEM teaching, learning, and research. Research conducted in this project is designed to unpack and measure two new inventive frontiers in STEM learning; 1) STEM associational fluency and 2) teaching and learning in cross-functional STEM diversity teams. STEM associational fluency in teachers is the teacher's ability to fluidly and deeply apply STEM content and contexts while designing and delivering instruction. Scales designed and tested include the expansion and refinement of an iSTEM scale to measure STEM associational fluency in teachers. Teaching and learning in cross functional design teams incorporates teams of STEM teachers from the varied STEM disciplines learning to blueprint (make explicit) disciplinary grounded content, co-plan, and design integrated design (iDesign) interventions that require students to apply cross cutting STEM content, concepts, and practices within a design or problem-based learning context. A new iDesign scale to measure and assess teachers' cross-functional iDesign interventions will be designed and tested. Other colleges and schools of engineering seeking to open up career pathways for their students will have benefit of the research, tools and strategies generated through this project. Ultimately, making engineering undergraduate students aware of the possibility of a teaching career at the K-12 level will have profound impact on the number and quality of teachers of STEM disciplines at the pre-college level in the future.