Integrating Science Content and Engineering Thinking in the Elementary Classroom

在美国国家科学基金会罗伯特·诺伊斯教师奖学金项目的资助下，“将科学内容和工程思维融入小学课堂项目”将招募科学、技术、工程和数学专业的学生和专业人士，并将他们培养成小学教师。该项目将在5年内每年提供10笔补助金，培养50名小学科学教师。在这个项目中，马萨诸塞大学波士顿分校将与两所波士顿公立小学和音乐学院实验室学校合作，将工程设计过程作为一种教学方法，用于促进科学学习。通过工程设计进行教学有可能促进满足新的科学教育标准要求的综合教学。基于设计的学习可以帮助学生发展科学探究和解决现实问题的能力，增强学科特定内容的知识和批判性思维能力，并促进对科学或工程职业的兴趣。该项目将通过培养小学教师使用工程实践，结合科学内容，向小学适龄儿童教授科学知识，提高对小学STEM教师培养领域的认识和理解。项目成果将有助于确定最近K-12教育改革的有效性，特别是那些要求将工程与科学教育相结合的改革，以及将科学和工程实践与教学内容相结合的改革。很少有小学教师准备项目专门专注于让小学教师准备好教授STEM内容。拟议的教师准备计划中包含两项新的评估，用于跟踪教师在小学课堂中整合工程和科学内容的能力，即视频案例诊断和课程批评与修订工具。这个独特的项目将重点放在小学阶段的STEM上，利用这两个工具来确定STEM整合对小学生科学内容知识的有效性。

With funding from the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program, the Integrating Science Content and Engineering Thinking in the Elementary Classroom Project will recruit Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics majors and professionals and prepare them to become elementary teachers. The project will fund 10 stipends per year over five years, resulting in the preparation of 50 elementary science teachers. In this project, the University of Massachusetts at Boston will collaborate with two Boston public elementary schools and the Conservatory Lab School to build on the idea of engineering design process as a teaching-learning approach that can be used to promote science learning. Teaching through engineering design has the potential to facilitate integrated instruction that meets the requirements of the new science education standards. Design-based learning can help students develop scientific inquiry and real world problem-solving skills, enhance discipline-specific content knowledge and critical thinking skills, and promote interest in science or engineering careers. This project will advance knowledge and understanding in the area of STEM teacher preparation at the elementary level by preparing elementary teachers to use engineering practices, integrated with science content, to teach science to elementary-aged children. Project outcomes will help determine the effectiveness of recent reforms in K-12 education, particularly those that call for the integration of engineering with science education, and will integrate the practices of science and engineering with didactic content. There are very few elementary teacher preparation programs that focus exclusively on preparing elementary teachers to teach STEM content. Built into the proposed teacher preparation program are two new assessments for tracking the ability of teachers to integrate engineering and science content in the elementary classroom, the Video Case Diagnosis and the Curriculum Critique and Revision tools. With its focus on STEM at the elementary level, this unique program will utilize these two tools to determine the effectiveness of STEM integration for building science content knowledge for elementary students.