Building Capacity for Teaching Engineering in K-12 Education (2020) / Chapter Skim
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5 Professional Learning
5 Professional Learning
Pages 129-196
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The committee sought evidence related to both questions. LEARNING NEEDS FOR TEACHING ENGINEERING To understand the potential learning needs of K–12 teachers of engineering, we begin by looking at what researchers believe are important learning needs 129
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; the content of teacher preparation and professional programs, teacher licensure, and certification examinations (e.g., Praxis content knowledge and teaching examinations) ; teacher development and evaluation systems (e.g., Danielson 2014)
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. Despite some differences, these two conceptions of the professional knowledge base of K–12 educators align in a number of ways.
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132 BUILDING CAPACITY FOR TEACHING ENGINEERING IN K–12 TABLE 5-1 Sykes and Wilson Framework Domain II: Professional Role Domain I: Instruction Responsibilities Planning Collaborating with other professionals • Preparing and planning for high quality • sing professional networks U instruction • Communicating professionally, both in • Drawing on students' cultural, family, person and via technology intellectual, and personal experiences • Collaborating in professional learning and resources communities and on teams • Promoting community participation as • Exercising leadership, both formally and opportunity to explore core values informally • Setting long- and short-range learning goals and objectives • Mastering lesson content for instructional purposes • Selecting and adapting resources for use in instruction • Selecting/designing instructional tasks, activity structures, and formats • Planning assessments Relational aspects Working with families and communities • Attending to relational aspects of • Fostering two-way, respectful instruction communication with parents and • Developing caring and respectful guardians relationships with individual students • Using family- and community-related • Attending to and promoting student information as a resource for learning social and emotional needs and learning • Building positive classroom climate Social/academic life Fulfilling ethical responsibilities • Establishing and maintaining the social • Enacting the basic moral principles and and academic culture duties associated with the role of teacher • Implementing organizational routines, and exercising diligence and prudence in norms, strategies, and procedures to observing these duties support a learning environment • Responding to ethical dilemmas with • Managing the physical and material sound reasoning and actions environment • Detecting and correcting biases of • Managing instructional groupings various kinds via reflection and feedback • Using time productively • Advocating appropriately for students
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Because they focus on teacher professional learning rather than on teaching as in the previous frameworks, these standards highlight not only what teachers need to know but how they might learn it. In developing the Standards, Farmer and colleagues turned to a previous, similar effort in science education, the National Science Education Standards (NSES; NRC 1996)
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. They also reviewed relevant research in science education, teacher preparation and development, and adult learning.
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Standard 8: Instructional Strategies -- The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to d evelop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways. Professional Responsibility Standard 9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice -- The teacher engages in ongoing professional learning and uses evidence to contin ually evaluate his/her practice, particularly the effects of his/her choices and actions on others (learners, families, other professionals, and the community)
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ncourage participants to reflect on multiple experiences with the E engineering design process, whether these have occurred within or outside the context of the current professional development oppor tunity, to reinforce learning about engineering content and practices; and 5. nable participants to compare design in engineering to design in E other fields (e.g., fashion, architecture, art)
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ngage participants in engineering design challenges that require E horizontal integration with non-engineering content (e.g., mathemat ics, science, social studies, English language arts, the arts, technol ogy education)
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Enable participants to identify engineering curriculum that is develop mentally, instructionally, and cognitively appropriate for their students; 2. Engage participants in evaluating the potential of engineering curricu lum to address one or more sets of student learning standards (e.g., ITEEA learning standards, Next Generation Science Standards, state standards)
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. As noted in chapter 2, STL expects students to understand and be able to apply the engineering design process.
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As noted in chapter 1, descriptive research may provide a basis for developing additional testable hypotheses about causes, and it may offer some testable insights about potential mechanisms, but it cannot be used to make causal claims. Engineering Design It seems logically sound to assert that all engineering teachers should have a foundational level of engineering literacy.
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. Professional learning experiences that delved more deeply into the engineering process -- for example, by exploring the roles of analysis, systems, and modeling -- helped educators not only develop deeper understanding of these concepts and practices but also integrate engineering activities in their classrooms to promote student science learning (Custer et al.
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We are convinced that engagement in the practices of engineering design is as much a part of learning science as engagement in the practices of science. Science and Mathematics for Engineering Student learning goals in engineering, technology, and science and teacher preparation standards in these subjects all note the importance of being able to use appropriate concepts and practices from science and mathematics to inform engineering problem solving.
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As teachers become more specialized at the middle school and, especially, high school levels, those who teach engineering will likely need deeper understanding about a greater number of science and mathematics ideas, as well as knowledge of how to help students apply them in service to engineering. Research finds some technology teacher preparation programs include few if any higher-level mathematics and science courses (Litowitz 2014)
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However, it is reasonable to expect that teachers of engineering, especially those teaching more advanced classes, would need at least the same level of subject-matter knowledge in science and mathematics as the students they teach. Given the broader literature on teacher professional knowledge, it is also likely that that minimal knowledge would be inadequate and teachers would probably need more extensive content knowledge, as well as relevant pedagogical content TABLE 5-2 Abbreviated Sample of Core Concepts and Subconcepts of Engineering for Secondary School Students Core concept of engineering Subconcepts Statics Resultants of force systems Equivalent force systems Equilibrium of rigid bodies Dynamics Kinematics (e.g., particles and rigid bodies)
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One detailed certification framework for prospective engineering teachers is the Texas TExES Mathematics/Physical Science/Engineering 6–12 teacher examination,2 which covers 12 domains, two of which (Engineering Method and Engineering Profession) specifically address engineering (table 5-3)
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Engineering Standard VII The beginning engineering teacher understands the importance of professional development and knows how students learn and develop engineering skills and concepts and uses this knowledge to plan and implement effective classroom instruction and laboratory experiences to meet curricular goals. Engineering Standard VIII The beginning engineering teacher knows how to provide a safe and productive learning environment for implementing activities in engineering education.
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That said, the list offers a hypothesis about requisite teacher knowledge that could be tested in future research. Pedagogical Content Knowledge for K–12 Engineering In addition to content knowledge of the subject they are teaching and general understanding of pedagogical methods, teachers need pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)
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The teachers tried several classroom techniques to manage both teaching engineering and assessing student outcomes, and in the course of trying different strategies developed engineering PCK. Sun and Strobel suggest that teachers who learn engineering content in professional learning situations need the experience of teaching in real-world settings to enable their PCK development.
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PROFESSIONAL LEARNING 149 TABLE 5-4 The Informed Design Teaching and Learning Matrix Beginning vs. informed Teaching designers Learning strategies Design Beginning Informed goals where where strategies designers… designers… students… students… Understand Pattern A
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150 BUILDING CAPACITY FOR TEACHING ENGINEERING IN K–12 TABLE 5-4 Continued Beginning vs. informed Teaching designers Learning strategies Design Beginning Informed goals where where strategies designers… designers… students… students… Generate Pattern C
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PROFESSIONAL LEARNING 151 TABLE 5-4 Continued Beginning vs. informed Teaching designers Learning strategies Design Beginning Informed goals where where strategies designers… designers… students… students… Weigh Pattern E
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152 BUILDING CAPACITY FOR TEACHING ENGINEERING IN K–12 TABLE 5-4 Continued Beginning vs. informed Teaching designers Learning strategies Design Beginning Informed goals where where strategies designers… designers… students… students… Troubleshoot Pattern G
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did not enable the authors to describe the performances at different grade levels, which would have enhanced the matrix's utility. The matrix has not been tested empirically as a tool for teacher professional development.
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also examined how teachers come to understand and teach students about the engineering design process. The study involved six middle school science, mathematics, and computer science teachers who had participated in a 15-hour PD workshop designed to support use of a specific engineering curriculum, the LEGO robotics toolset, and ROBOLAB programming language.
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That literature suggests that teachers benefit by reflecting on both the professional learning experi ence itself and how to use new information in teaching (e.g., Penuel et al. 2007; Rogers et al.
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, working to create an engineering curriculum for Navajo Nation middle school students, note the "similarities
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between the Navajo way of life, which is a holistic cycle of thinking, planning, living, and assuring/testing" and the engineering design process. In a specific instance of curriculum design for greater inclusivity, researchers (Kern et al.
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EEBEI-T was validated in a study involving 144 high school STEM teachers in a city in the Midwestern United States (Nathan
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" Like research on the professional learning needs of engineering teachers, the research base related to professional learning opportunities for K–12 engineering teachers is limited. This is both because there are very few teacher education programs in engineering (see chapter 4, Programs for Prospective Teachers)
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knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions necessary to demonstrate positive impact on A great deal of research has investigated the causal relationship between all P–12 students' learning and development. pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical teacher subject-matter knowledge, ndard 3: Candidate Quality, Recruitment, and Selectivity: The provider demonstrates that the content knowledge.
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Standard 4: Program Impact: The provider demonstrates the impact of its completers on P–12 student learning and development, classroom instruction, and schools, and the satisfaction of its completers with the relevance and effectiveness of their preparation. Standard 5: Provider Quality Assurance and Continuous Improvement: The provider maintains a quality assurance system comprised of valid data from multiple measures, including evidence of candi dates' and completers' positive impact on P–12 student learning and devel pment.
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Banilower and colleagues (2018) found that just 13 percent of high school science teachers, 10 percent of middle school science teachers, and 3 percent of elementary school teachers had taken at least one engineering course during their undergraduate education.
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North C arolina State University's bachelor of science in elementary education includes a required course in engineering design methods taught by engineering faculty. Prospective teachers learn to integrate engineering in their elementary teaching activities, specifically connecting to math and science instruction, and graduate with positive attitudes about engineering ( iFrancesca et al.
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At least one teacher education program, at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, has taken steps to address the lack of diversity in the K–12 STEM teacher workforce. The Sherman STEM Teacher Scholars Program provides a host of supports for prospective STEM teachers who will work in urban and high-needs schools, including a summer bridge program that prepares students for the program; advising, coaching, and mentoring on professional, academic, and personal topics; and fellowships or summer internships in diverse academic settings under the guidance of teachermentors (Hrabowski and Sanders 2015)
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found that over two-thirds of schools across all grades surveyed have formal teacher induction programs, most lasting two or fewer years. Despite the interest in early-career support programs, there is a very small research literature documenting the content and character of effective teacher induction.
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This is likely due to the scarcity of teacher preparation programs that graduate teachers equipped to teach engineering and the limited research in the domain of engineering teacher development. A summary of a convocation on the roles of teachers in policymaking for K–12 engineering education included the suggestion that teacher leaders in engineering could design mentoring programs for beginning teachers of engineering (NASEM 2017)
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It was beyond the scope of the committee to synthesize all of that research and best practice, so as elsewhere we relied on several syntheses of relevant literature. For example, a National Academies report on science teacher learning (NASEM 2015)
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It is helpful to understand teacher development as not only an individual issue but also a collective one, relying on mechanisms such as teacher professional learning communities and school-wide supports (NASEM 2015)
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Some universities have incorporated engineering education graduate certificates in their curricula to provide professional development to current teachers in addition to teacher preparation (e.g., Besser and Monson 2014; Neebel 2015)
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Each team spent six weeks conducting research, participating in professional learning activities, and developing an engineering lesson plan to submit to the TeachEngineering website.11 Participating team members 7 A small number of these programs were funded by companies (e.g., Henderson et al. 2010; Rockland et al.
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For example, high school teachers who attended a one-week professional learning experience and then interacted with GK–12 graduate teaching fellows in science and engineering showed improved attitudes toward interdisciplinary teaching and teaching satisfaction, although middle school teachers in the same program did not show the same improvements (Al Salami et al.
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A small number of evaluations compared outcomes between those attending the professional learning experience and a similar group of educators who did not attend (e.g., Rich et al.
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2014) , many engineering professional learning programs explicitly assess changes in those areas.
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High-quality professional development sessions and K–12 engineering curricula can demonstrate how engineering ideas might be translated for stu dents of various ages. Participating in engineering activities as their students will provides a safe space for teachers to build their own knowledge of engineering.
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Finally, teachers tell me that their students' responses to engineer ing activities propel them to work through the initial rough spots to hone their engineering instruction. They find that students are often more engaged in engineering activities than other school activities.
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. Elementary teachers who participated in a year-long program that included 45 minutes of professional learning each week on computing and engineering in K–12 education increased their self-efficacy to teach these subjects compared to teachers from a similar school who did not participate, although both groups of teachers had similar self-efficacy for teaching math and science.
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examined the content and face validity of the TESS using structural equation modeling and item analyses. The engineering design scale consists of 36 questions that ascertain motiva tion and anxiety about performing engineering design activities as well as self-efficacy and outcome expectations individuals have about engineer ing design.
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With greater expertise, teachers adapt lessons and activities to real-world contexts that students understand and relate to. Second, as teachers acquired engineering PCK, they increased their expertise, began to overcome problems such as student frustration with the engineering design process or group work, and eventually created lessons that provide active learning experiences for the students.
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Teachers spent seven weeks during two consecutive summers learning foundational engineering and design principles as well as applications of engineering to math and science topics. Some of the professional learning courses were taught by university engineering faculty, others by high school teachers experienced in K–12 engineering education.
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A key component was the creation of advisory groups of Native community members to help develop and provide culturally relevant professional learning experiences for the teachers (Becker et al.
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The committee's review of the literature describing engineering-specific teacher learning experiences uncovered some evidence that such professional learning can lead to improvements in teachers' self-efficacy to teach engineering, attitudes toward engineering, and knowledge of the engineering design process and concepts. However, there is little research connecting those learning experiences to
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Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 24–27, Honolulu. Barrett D, Usselman M
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to develop a STEM professional development model for teachers of American Indian students. Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 14–17, Austin.
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2016. Integrating STEM and literacy through engineering design: Evaluation of professional develop ment for middle school math and science teachers (Program/Curriculum Evaluation)
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Engineering design education in an elementary teacher preparation program. Issues in Teacher Education 23(1)
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2011. The nature of teacher knowledge of and self-efficacy in teaching engineering design in a STOMP classroom.
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2012. Middle-school teachers' understanding and teaching of the engineering design process: A look at subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge.
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Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 25–28, Columbus. Kapila V
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2015. The engineering design process as a safe place to try again: Responses to failure by elementary teachers and students.
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Conversations with K–6 prin cipals following three years of engineering education professional development for their faculty. Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 15–18, Indianapolis.
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Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 14–17, Seattle. NGA [National Governors Association]
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Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 20–23, Charlotte, NC. Reimers JE, Farmer CL, Klein-Gardner SS.
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2014. From knowing-about to knowing-to: Development of engineering pedagogical content knowledge by elementary teachers through perceived learning and implementing difficulties.
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Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 16–19, Tampa. Thompson CL, Zeuli JS.
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Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 26–29, New Orleans.
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