Despite the intent to advance engineering education with NGSS, teachers across all grades lack self-efficacy in engineering pedagogy. Instructional shifts envisioned by NGSS, especially with inclusion of engineering, require substantial learning by teachers. For rural schools, due to geographic location and smaller collegial networks, there are challenges in providing content-specific professional learning. This project gathered researchers from four states to provide PL aligned to NGSS and delivered remotely to 150 rural teachers. In summer 2023, experts led a five-day workshop which modeled shifts called for by NGSS (e.g., equitable, discourse-rich, phenomena-based) and provided opportunities to experience next-generation teaching and learning. Likert scale surveys were collected before and after the workshop to gauge self-efficacy regarding teaching science and engineering. We found that science-focused PL, with engineering embedded rather than as stand-alone component, afforded growth in self-efficacy for teaching engineering. Pre-workshop surveys showed that teachers had higher self-efficacy towards teaching science than teaching engineering (Wilcoxon signed-rank; p<.001). Positive attitudes toward teaching science were leveraged to provide PL and pre-workshop to post-workshop analysis showed growth in self-efficacy towards teaching engineering (p<.001). Results are important for professional learning around teaching engineering, for professional learning with rural teachers, and for remote access to professional learning.
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Rural teachers’ cultural and epistemic shifts in STEM teaching and learning.
This article focuses on the ways in which integrated curriculum can improve STEM teaching and learning within rural spaces. Using a design-based research approach, this study focuses on rural teachers' experiences of professional learning and development training as they learn to engage computing and maker technologies in their elementary classrooms as tools for teaching students about difficult histories of immigration, migration, and forced relocation across the United States.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1758823
- PAR ID:
- 10341297
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Theory and practice in rural education
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2641-7170
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 45-66
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3776/tpre.2021.v11n2p45-66
