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The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic forced a rapid transition of K-16 education to remote and online learning in the final quarter of the 2019–2020 school year. The disruption was extreme for all teachers in K-12 but particularly for teachers involved in pilot programs, such as the NSF-funded Engineering for Us All (e4usa) project. This paper reports the key findings obtained through systematic data collection from a pilot cohort of high school teachers who adapted a brand-new engineering curriculum during the COVID-19 pandemic, students who experienced the adapted curriculum, and a new cohort of teachers who were tasked with teaching the updated curriculum.
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Effect of COVID on a High School Engineering Curriculum
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education on all fronts with no warning. The response from K-12 education’s transition has not been as straight forward. Existing issues of equity, access, and inclusion required school districts, schools, and teachers to adopt a variety of solutions, including no instruction, online instruction, and shipping materials/supplies to students at home. The pilot cohort of [program name] teachers provides a unique opportunity to understand how teachers had to transition, especially when implementing a new and innovative engineering curriculum. An anonymous social media post had some interesting insight: “We gave educators almost no notice. We asked them to completely redesign what school looks like, and in about 24 hours, local teachers and administrations fixed it. No state or national agency did this, the local educators fixed it in HOURS. In the midst of a global crisis. In fact, state and national policies actually created roadblocks. Local schools figured out how to work around these. No complaining, no handwringing, just solutions and amazingly clever plans. Get out of the way of a teacher and watch with amazement at what really happens.” We know that high schools adapted quickly. This work-in-progress discusses initial findings from teacher interviews on what happened during this unforeseen and unique transition. Teacher interviews were supplemented with data from teacher focus groups, with data analyzed to examine the impact of the COVID-19 disruption from the perspective of a teacher new to an engineering curriculum. Specifically, we will examine the following research question: How did the pilot year [program name] teachers adapt and deliver the curriculum during the COVID-19 disruption? We are exploring teacher delivery of the [program name] curriculum through a variety of levels to capture the drivers that prompted decisions, identify pedagogical adjustments, and identify drivers behind the chosen changes.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1849430
- PAR ID:
- 10294533
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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