Research: Practices of Engineers in Rural Schools Involving Students and Teachers (PERSIST) in Engineering

为了应对未来复杂的全球挑战，必须招募和留住更多样化的工程师群体。来自农村地区的学生通常在玩耍、在农场工作或设计日常问题的解决方案时获得STEM技能，但目前的教育体系往往无法帮助这些学生将他们所做的工程与工程作为一种潜在的职业联系起来。因此，农村学生构成了一个重要的人口，可以增加能够解决这些问题的工程师的多样性和数量，但这些学校的教师很少有工程经验，并且很难向学生教授工程学。为了应对最近的STEM教育改革，包括要求小学课堂教授工程学，正在制定课程和专业发展机会，以帮助学校进行这些改革。但是教师学习和随后教授工程学的方式却没有得到充分的研究。该项目的研究结果将用于向教师教育工作者提出具体和可推广的建议，以促进农村和中级教师的工程专业发展讲习班，并向教师提出如何利用当地相关问题和课堂项目来帮助学生了解工程，并将工程视为可行和充实的职业选择。工程研究表明，内容和做法是通过学生和教师之间的社会互动参与工程项目位于一个复杂的课堂文化。来自科学中心和学校的教师和一名STEM教育研究生将系统地跟踪来自一个小型农村学区的三名案例研究教师，因为他们在两个教师研讨会上学习和做工程项目，然后在他们的教室里实施这些项目。利用当地的知识基金，并侧重于让学生参与工程师的认识实践，以提高学生的学习，兴趣和兴奋。正在采用混合方法综合定性和定量数据的结果。定量方法，以更好地了解科学和工程的学习和学生的兴趣，使用通过其他资助项目开发的心理测量仪器。然而，社会文化的角度需要定性的方法，研究这些过程中的现场interactionethnography。课堂和研讨会视频，访谈，反思性期刊和工作工件的案例定性分析之间和内部将用于推动传播到学前工程教育工作者，从业人员，州政府官员和参与者在宾夕法尼亚州农村地区的STEM生态系统。除了三名案例研究教师外，还将邀请42名来自农村、服务水平低下学校的教师参加讲习班，并将形成一个在线实践社区，旨在支持他们在中等课堂上持续实施工程项目，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过以下方式支持：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。

A more diverse group of engineers must be recruited and retained in order to address complex global challenges in the future. Students from rural areas often acquire STEM skills as they play, work on farms, or design solutions to day-to-day problems, but the current educational system often fails to help these students make connections between the engineering they do and engineering as a potential career. Rural students, therefore make up a significant population that can add to the diversity and numbers of engineers able to address these problems, but teachers in these schools rarely have experience with engineering, and struggle to teach engineering to students. In response to recent reforms in STEM education, including mandates for elementary classrooms to teach engineering, curriculum and professional development opportunities are being developed to help schools in these reforms. But the ways teachers learn about, and subsequently teach, engineering has been understudied. The findings of this project will be used to make specific and generalizable recommendations to teacher educators about facilitating engineering professional development workshops for rural, middle-level teachers and to teachers about how to use locally relevant problems and classroom projects to help students learn about engineering and view engineering as a viable and fulfilling career option. Engineering studies suggest that content and practices are learned through social interactions among students and teachers participating in engineering projects situated within a complex classroom culture. Faculty from the Center for Science and the Schools and a STEM-education graduate student will systematically follow three case study teachers from one small, rural school district in situ as they learn and do engineering projects in two teacher workshops and then in their classrooms as they implement these projects in their classrooms, using local funds of knowledge and focusing on engaging students in the epistemic practices of engineers to increase student learning, interest and excitement. A mixed-methods approach is being used to synthesize the findings of both qualitative and quantitative data. Quantitative methods are employed to better understand science and engineering learning and student interest using psychometric instruments developed through other funded projects. However, the sociocultural perspective requires qualitative methods of interactional ethnography to study these processes in situ. Between and within case qualitative analyses of classroom and workshop video, interviews, reflective journals, and work artifacts will be used to drive dissemination to precollege engineering educators, practitioners, state government officials, and participants in a STEM ecosystem for rural areas in Pennsylvania. In addition to the three case study teachers, 42 teacher from rural, underserved schools will be invited to participate in the workshops and will form an online community of practice aimed to support their ongoing implementation of engineering projects in their middle level classrooms, potentially impacting thousands of students over the next several years.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.