Building Capacity for Teaching Engineering in K-12 Education (2020) / Chapter Skim
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4 The Workforce of K12 Teachers of Engineering
4 The Workforce of K12 Teachers of Engineering
Pages 75-128
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CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WORKFORCE In an effort to shed light on how many K–12 educators are currently teaching engineering, the committee examined data from the federal National Teacher 75
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and drafting, code 246, part of the career or technical education category) ; and industrial arts or technology education (code 255, also part of career or technical education)
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For the remainder of this section, we combine data for natural sciences engineering teachers and teachers of "construction trades, engineering, or science technologies" and refer to this combined dataset as "engineering
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classes, career-focused industrial technology, and technology education programs that include differing degrees of engineering content. The varied implementation of technology education makes it difficult to clearly distinguish from K–12 "engineering education." The distinctions are most clear between the industrial arts model of technology education, with its emphasis on tool skills and fabrication of technological artifacts, and engineering education that focuses on the engineering design pro cess as an approach to problem solving.
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4.0 percent of industrial arts teachers identified "construction trades, engineering, or science technology" as their main teaching area. Compared with engineering teachers, science and mathematics were much less prevalent as main teaching areas for industrial arts and technology teachers.6 6 Industrial arts or technology education teachers' main science teaching areas included "science, general" (0.6 percent)
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. 8 The survey instructed teachers to consider engineering courses as those that "address the nature of engineering, engineering design processes, technological systems, or technology and society.
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Demographics and Diversity NTPS also provides demographic information about engineering and technology education or industrial arts teachers. The committee was particularly interested in the race/ethnicity and gender makeup of this population, since the engineering discipline has struggled to attract women and people of color to the field.
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For example, one recent study reports that only 3 percent of elementary and 42 percent of middle school science teachers have a degree in science or engineering (Banilower et al. 2018, table 2.6)
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Also unlike engineering teachers, the large majority, about 89 percent, of industrial arts or technology education teachers who majored or minored in one of those fields was certified to teach. Fewer industrial arts or technology education teachers, about 58 percent, were certified to teach one of those subjects and also majored or minored in one of them.
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A small share (13.9 percent) majored in "industrial arts or technology education," 11.3 percent majored in "construction trades, engineering, or science technologies," and only 6.3 percent majored in "engineering." Just as most nonengineering certifications held by engineering teachers were in closely related CTE, science, or mathematics fields, most nonengineering first majors reported by engineering teachers are in CTE, science, or mathematics fields.
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A small share, 5.8 percent, of industrial arts teachers had no bachelor's degree at all, fewer than was the case for engineering teachers. Although 13.9 percent of engineering teachers had their first major in industrial arts, only 1.8 percent majored in "construction trades, engineering, or science technologies," and just 0.9 percent of industrial arts or technology teachers had their first major in engineering.
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I had to learn how to write curriculum, become comfortable with the pedagogy required to teach engineering, learn how to scaffold learning, and think about what would be fun and engaging for students. Stepping into the classroom was a whole new world and I wanted to make sure that I was fully prepared to take advantage of the opportunity to inspire the students in my afterschool program.
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Knowing that everyone isn't a natural born teacher, we try to make sure that they are well versed in the curriculum and receive professional development in pedagogy and classroom management before heading into the classroom. We have found that the more com fortable one is with the material being taught, the better they are able to implement it in front of others.
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. It is worth noting that the amount of engineering content in these teacher preparation programs varies, and in some programs prospective teachers are exposed to little or no engineering-related coursework (Fantz and Katsioloudis 2011)
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Although a small number of UTeach programs have recently enabled engineering students to pair their disciplinary degree with a certificate to teach secondary STEM subjects,15 UTeach has not caught on in engineering the way it has in the natural sciences and mathematics. One reason may be that starting salaries for engineering majors are higher than any other major except computer science (NACE 2018)
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Program leaders believe accreditation may increase the appeal of E-Plus to matriculating engineering students interested in a broad range of concentrations, including teacher licensure. In addition to the UTeach initiatives, another roughly half-dozen universities across the country provide engineering coursework to students enrolled in teacher preparation programs (some of these are described in NAE and NRC 2014, pp.
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and Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE) recently published new national standards for preservice science teacher preparation programs (Morrell et al.
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These include finding space in an already full curriculum, mustering the political will to change existing programs, and ensuring that BOX 4-3 Engineering-Related Standards and Elements of 2020 Science Teacher Preparation Program Standards Standard 1: Content Knowledge Effective teachers of science understand and articulate the knowledge and practices of contemporary science and engineering. They connect important disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices for their fields of licensure.
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Standard 5: Impact on Student Learning Effective teachers of science provide evidence that students have learned and can apply disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices as a result of instruction. Effec tive teachers analyze learning gains for individual students, the class as a whole, and subgroups of students disaggregated by demographic categories, and use these to inform planning and teaching.
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EDC initially identified over 120 programs that met the criterion of including "the e xplicit instruction of engineering design and/or engineering practices as an explicit goal for the educators, either together with other disciplines or as a standalone discipline." (A description of the methodology used to identify the programs is in appendix 4-A, and the survey instrument and follow-up interview protocol are in appendixes 4-B and 4-C.) From the original set of organizations identified by EDC, 50 completed the survey.
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One item in the survey asked science teachers whether their professional development over the previous three years gave "heavy emphasis" to a number of areas. Twenty-five percent of elementary teachers, 34 percent of middle school teachers, and 23 percent of high school teachers indicated they had PD to deepen "their understanding of how engineering is done (e.g., identifying criteria and constraints, designing solutions, optimizing solutions)
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The EiE project conducts workshops and other teacher professional development activities to support use of the curriculum. Some 11,000 teachers have received EiE and in 2017, based on purchases of its instructional units, EiE estimated that 107,000 teachers were using the curriculum in all 50 states and Washington, DC.
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Many leaders discussed a primary program goal of increasing teacher and student familiarity with the profession of engineering and roles of engineers. As one described it, "It is about learning the engineering design process and having a better sense of what engineers do." Overall, programs were designed to expose educators and students to the field of engineering, which many noted is commonly overlooked in K–12 education.
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It's diverse in the kinds of problems it tries to solve as well. In terms of measuring outcomes, the EDC survey found that PD programs for K–12 engineering educators used a variety of methods.
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Some program leaders described efforts to quantitatively measure teacher and student learning of engineering content and skills, as well as teacher comfort with engineering, all of which were primarily measured through surveys or pre-/postassessments. But qualitative measures were more common, in part because they are well adapted to assessing shifts in educator mindset, as illustrated in these quotes: We've had a lot of teachers tell us they've fundamentally changed their teaching in general as a result of coming to our workshops, because they've realized they can do open-ended stuff.
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They conducted training. In summary, a handful of teacher preparation programs include engineering instruction, and the graduates of most of these initiatives end up teaching science or mathematics.
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The effort involved a search of the official websites of state departments of education and state CTE programs for the presence of engineering and/ or engineering design content (box 4-7) , using credentialing terms such as "engineering," "technology education," "STEM," "industrial arts," "engineering and technology education," and "industrial education." The search proved challenging because of states' multiple online locations for storing such information, less-than-optimal navigation and search features on some websites, and inconsistencies in the terminology used.
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CTE credentialing often offers multiple professional pathways to teacher certification. For example, in lieu of requiring the completion of an approved teacher preparation program at an institution of higher education, CTE credentialing can require a combination of academic preparation and documented professional work experience in the occupational field.
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says 30 percent of its content is related to the "foundations of engineering and technology." When a specific content test was not specified or a test's engineer ing content could not be verified, the consultants examined the state's teacher credentialing content standards. If the standards required the credential holder to know about topics such as engineering design, en gineering problem solving, engineering physics/sciences, and/or specific engineering disciplines, the credential was considered to address engi neering and it was included in the results.
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Work experience or a national industry license or certification can also meet the content knowledge requirement for STEM teaching certification, as can passing three Praxis tests, in mathematics, science, and technology education. In Iowa, teachers in grades K–8 can get a STEM endorsement that allows them to teach science, mathematics, or "integrated STEM" (IBEE 2019, #975)
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. Test takers should be able to demonstrate that they • understand the engineering design process; • know how to apply and use engineering principles in the engineer ing design process; 21 See www.fl.nesinc.com/studyguide/FL_SG_obj_055.htm, Competency 3.
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• understanding of the role of mathematics, science, and economics in the design process (e.g., application of knowledge of a variety of mathematical topics, including trigonometry, vectors, matrices, and calculus, to solve engineering problems) • understanding of the engineering design process, including using technology to test design solutions and, based on that analysis, re esigning products, systems, or services.
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There are very few post secondary programs preparing new teachers to teach engineering, and most of these are in technology education. The credentialing landscape for K–12 eachers of engineering is hard to chart; a number of state credentials refert ence engineering, but it is not clear that any provide a professional pathway into teaching engineering at the K–12 level.
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It is somewhat encouraging that in the sample of engineering-related PD programs surveyed by EDC, over half aimed to help teachers integrate engineering content into an existing school-based science or mathematics course. Whatever the challenges associated with describing the current workforce of K–12 teachers of engineering, it will be important to provide highquality, effective professional learning experiences to these educators.
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In collaboration with NAE staff, through the conversations with advisors and experts and an initial scan of websites and project abstracts, our team developed key program characteristics that provided a framework for building survey items. The resulting survey consisted of several sections of questions that asked respondents to describe their programs: program background, professional development goals and outcomes, and program structures and activities.
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, school or district administrators, school board members, or undergraduate educators. What constitutes Educator support that uses, develops, or tests a specified preparation/ professional development model that may not accompany a professional specific curricula, and includes development?
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Therefore, the survey was sent in two waves: the first wave went to 72 respondents whom we had identified through our reviewed sources as meeting our inclusion criteria; the second wave, sent two weeks later, went to an additional 51 respondents identified through respondents to the first wave, for a total of 123 possible respondents. During the week prior to closing the survey, the project lead sent one final, more personal follow-up email, briefly describing the importance of the survey and stating the closing date.
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Toward this end, questions requested information about what educators experience in a professional development session to get a sense of the strategies and learning experiences used to support educator learning of the practices of engineering. This attention to process was also the goal of the interview questions on outcomes.
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Available online at https://www. asee.org/conferences-and-events/outreach/egfi-program/k12-teacher-professional development (accessed August 14, 2019)
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Your participation in this survey is greatly appreciated, as it will contribute to an understanding of the current status of efforts across the country to prepare educators to teach engineering at the preK–12 level. Some self-selected respondents will be asked to participate in a follow-up interview in order to understand individual programs in more depth.
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: (7) ____________________ Does your PD support educators in their knowledge of, and ability to teach, the engineering design process and/or engineering practices?
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Are the teachers expected to teach engineering � a standalone course in a school (1) As � Integrated in a preexisting school-based science or math course (2)
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(Examples: teachers report increased comfort; teachers able to implement engineering activities according to our framework; teachers understand engineering design) What types of measures do you use to determine these educator outcomes?
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: (10) ____________________ W hat engineering education credentialing, if any, is offered in your state?
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Educators � � � � � observe others teaching engineering activities (4)
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Across the Field This section of the survey asks about your understandings and reflections from across the field of educator preparation as it relates to preK–12 engineering education.
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5. If an educator asked for advice on how to learn how to teach engineering, what programs (preparation or professional development)
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Of the professional development (PD) specifically?
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a. How is engineering design represented in your program activities?
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14. hat opportunities exist in engineering activities as a field?
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:19–31. Available online at https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v23n1/pdf/fantz.pdf (accessed August 16, 2018)
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2014. A curricular analysis of undergraduate technology & engineering teacher preparation programs in the United States.
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Available online at https://tea.texas.gov/Texas_ Educators/Preparation_and_Continuing_Education/Approved_Educator_Standards/ (accessed August 30, 2018)
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Paper presented at the 2017 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 25–28, Columbus, OH. Available online at https://peer.asee.org/27522 (accessed August 24, 2018)
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