Major challenges in engineering education include retention of undergraduate engineering students (UESs) and continued engagement after the first year when concepts increase in difficulty. Additionally, employers, as well as ABET, look for students to demonstrate non-technical skills, including the ability to work successfully in groups, the ability to communicate both within and outside their discipline, and the ability to find information that will help them solve problems and contribute to lifelong learning. Teacher education is also facing challenges given the recent incorporation of engineering practices and core ideas into the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and state level standards of learning. To help teachers meet these standards in their classrooms, education courses for preservice teachers (PSTs) must provide resources and opportunities to increase science and engineering knowledge, and the associated pedagogies. To address these challenges, Ed+gineering, an NSF-funded multidisciplinary collaborative service learning project, was implemented into two sets of paired-classes in engineering and education: a 100 level mechanical engineering class (n = 42) and a foundations class in education (n = 17), and a fluid mechanics class in mechanical engineering technology (n = 23) and a science methods class (n = 15). The paired classes collaborated in multidisciplinary teams of 5-8 undergraduate students to plan and teach engineering lessons to local elementary school students. Teams completed a series of previously tested, scaffolded activities to guide their collaboration. Designing and delivering lessons engaged university students in collaborative processes that promoted social learning, including researching and planning, peer mentoring, teaching and receiving feedback, and reflecting and revising their engineering lesson.
The research questions examined in this pilot, mixed-methods research study include: (1) How did PSTs’ Ed+gineering experiences influence their engineering and science knowledge?; (2) How did PSTs’ and UESs’ Ed+gineering experiences influence their pedagogical understanding?; and (3) What were PSTs’ and UESs’ overall perceptions of their Ed+gineering experiences? Both quantitative (e.g., Engineering Design Process assessment, Science Content Knowledge assessment) and qualitative (student reflections) data were used to assess knowledge gains and project perceptions following the semester-long intervention. Findings suggest that the PSTs were more aware and comfortable with the engineering field following lesson development and delivery, and often better able to explain particular science/engineering concepts. Both PSTs and UESs, but especially the latter, came to realize the importance of planning and preparing lessons to be taught to an audience. UESs reported greater appreciation for the work of educators. PSTs and UESs expressed how they learned to work in groups with multidisciplinary members—this is a valuable lesson for their respective professional careers. Yearly, the Ed+gineering research team will also request and review student retention reports in their respective programs to assess project impact.
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The impacts of COVID-19 on K-8 science teaching and teachers
Some science education researchers have presented either isolated findings on specific points in time during the pandemic or non-empirical insights or suggestions for how teachers, district leaders, policymakers, and others should take up the learnings from the pandemic to move science education forward. However, there are few studies published to date that provide robust and longitudinal empirical data on what science instruction looked like throughout the pandemic and the magnitude of the impacts of the pandemic on science instruction when compared to pre-pandemic science teaching and learning. We conducted a primarily survey-based study on science instruction and enactment of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in K-8 classrooms throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis also incorporates a longitudinal dataset from grade 6–8 teachers across California on their NGSS instruction prior to and throughout the first year of the pandemic, providing insight on instruction over multiple years before and throughout distance learning. Our findings highlight the challenges that teachers and students faced during the pandemic, as well as the significant impacts that distance learning appeared to have on science instruction and teachers’ ability to provide NGSS-aligned instruction. However, we also found that a year after the initial school closures, teachers’ science instruction began to show improvements both in the frequency of science instruction (how often they were able to provide science instruction through distance learning) and the quality of science instruction (how often teachers were able to provide instruction that was aligned with the goals of the NGSS). Implications of this work are far reaching and may impact teachers, students, administrators, policymakers, professional learning providers, and curriculum developers regardless of whether science instruction occurs through distance learning or in-person moving forward.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10367201
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research
- Volume:
- 4
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2662-2300
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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