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1. Applying Principles of the PDP Towards Mentoring

   https://doi.org/10.58021/S55P4H  

   Severson, Scott; Dunkin, Robin; Walker, Samantha (January 2022, Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators (ISEE))

   Seagroves, Scott; Barnes, Austin; Metevier, Anne; Porter, Jason; Hunter, Lisa (Ed.)

   In this paper, we explore how core principles of the mentoring training offered by the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators (ISEE) Professional Development Program (PDP) have been adopted by PDP alumni and applied in different contexts. The core themes of the mentoring work conducted by ISEE, which are Inquiry, Equity & Inclusion, and Assessment, form an extensible basis for PDP participants to use as they develop their own mentoring programs. The panel/paper is structured to briefly identify core components of mentoring in the PDP model and then discuss how former PDP participants have applied these in a variety of other venues. With the goal of broadening access & persistence in STEM, the PDP emphasized: the role of ownership and agency, the practice of explanations, the creation of opportunities for recognition, providing formative assessment, and a recognition of and introduction to STEM culture. The PDP has had a unique way of “staying with” participants and provided a framework for mentoring in other modalities including: peer-to-peer, informal, and in the development of new formal programs. These offshoots include key PDP ideas such as: providing support for belonging in STEM, placing value on teaching, promoting adaptability and cultural relevance, and a “training the trainers” modality of mentorship. The panelists will provide examples from programs for undergraduate students, graduate students, teaching professionals, and faculty. The session also provided opportunities for attendees to share their experiences and take-away lessons from the PDP model of mentoring and some of the panel feedback is included in this paper. The ISEE community has a shared vocabulary, toolset, and ethos that continues to inform alumni mentoring since the inception of the PDP. 

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2. Socially Engaged Engineering: A Framework for K-8 Education

   https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1407  

   Cunningham, Christine M.; Kelly, Gregory J; Mohan, Ashwin (October 2023, Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER))

   Senay Purzer (Ed.)

   Socially engaged engineering provides for student learning of the design, analysis, and practices of engineering as well as the ways that engineering is situated in sociocultural contexts. This paper provides a conceptual framework regarding socially engaged engineering for K-8 educators, researchers, and curriculum designers. The framework identifies ways to support youth learning of engineering and considerations of technical, social, environmental, and ethical dimensions of engineering. As engineering enters K-8 educational settings, it is important to introduce the discipline in equity-oriented ways. We draw from the field of engineering for social justice to build this framework for examining engineering at the macro-, meso-, and microscales. Situating engineering in sociocultural contexts can be motivating to learners and provide perspectives on the nature of engineering. Our framework was concurrently designed with Youth Engineering Solutions (YES; https://YouthEngineeringSolutions.org) curricular units. To test the applicability of our principles, we applied them to K-8 YES curricula for school and out-of-school environments. Through the coevolution of principles and curricular materials, we developed age-appropriate learning objectives for three levels—lower elementary, upper elementary, and middle school. This paper shares the principles and progression, showing worked examples from curricula to demonstrate how the principles translate into curricular resources. We discuss constraints to the implementation of socially engaged engineering curricula, including those imposed in educational settings and the ideological assumptions about science, engineering, and STEM disciplines. 

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3. Growing Mathletes: A Model for Integrating Growth Mindset and Other Content in Informal Settings

   Buxner, S; Baze, C; Miller, S; Rendes, C; Turner, E; Valerdi, R (January 2024, Astronomical Society of the Pacific)

   Schultz, Greg; Barnes, Jonathan; Shore, Linda (Ed.)

   Growing Mathletes is an NSF-funded program that is developing a curricular model to successfully integrate growth mindset principles, baseball, and math and science concepts for youth in grades 3 to 8 in out of school learning settings. Using a Design-Based Implementation Research framework for implementing, testing, and revising a curriculum and professional learning model, we are working on best practices to support youth learning and confidence as well as facilitator training and support in both afterschool and summer programs. We present youth outcomes as evidence of successes in how the program has integrated growth mindset with other content as a way to support youth’s productive mindset in their own learning along with content gains. 

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4. Empathy Instruction through the Propagation Paradigm: A synthesis of developer and adopter accounts

   Sochacka, N. W. (April 2021, Advances in engineering education)

   null (Ed.)

   Prior research indicates that empathy can help engineers achieve better outcomes in team-based, design, entrepreneurial, and humanitarian environments. We describe an educational innovation designed to teach engineering students empathic communication skills. Written in the spirit of a propagation (versus dissemination) paradigm, we focus on how the original innovation was adapted to fit into two instructional settings that differed from the first implementation context. We use first person instructor accounts to describe these adaptation processes, including interactions between the developers and the adopters of the innovation, what modifications were necessary to “fit” the innovation into the new settings, and adopter experiences. We conclude with a brief discussion of particularly salient propagation considerations that emerged for the two adopters including, for example, the amount of instructional time available for implementing the empathic communication exercises, and how to achieve student buy-in in different course settings. The two main contributions of this paper are, first, the rich descriptions of how features of the original educational innovation had to be modified to meet the two other settings’ pedagogical goals and, second, an example of how to advance scholarship that supports the propagation of engineering education teaching and learning innovations. 

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5. How Can Educators Exchange High-Quality Feedback with Various Forms of Evidence of Practice?: An Analysis of Afterschool Educator Professional Growth Through Noticing

   https://doi.org/10.1080/1046560X.2025.2466289  

   Cian, Heidi; Kastelein, Kate (February 2025, Journal of Science Teacher Education)

   While youth derive much of their science learning and appreciation outside of the formal science classroom, educators in afterschool and other out-of-school time (OST) settings have received relatively little investment in their professional learning. One exception is ACRES, a program that provides professional learning modules for OST educators in STEM facilitation skills, including Asking Purposeful Questions. Educators who participate in these facilitation modules exchange feedback with one another in response to the evidence of practice they bring to the professional learning setting. Due to the diverse nature of OST settings and the unique demands OST educators experience in their work, the type of evidence of practice participants bring to these sessions varies. Using a framework of teacher noticing, we explore how peer feedback in Asking Purposeful Questions modules differentiates across these diverse forms of evidence, as well as how differential feedback aligns with outcomes the coaches of Asking Purposeful Questions modules hope to see realized. We explore common forms of evidence educators experience in these cohorts, including video of contrived practice; authentic video with youth; professionally produced videos the coaches provide; and lesson descriptions. We find that, while all forms of evidence elicit noticing and associated feedback exchange supporting the module’s desired outcomes, each may be expected to exhibit specific strengths and limitations. We suggest that coaches may build upon these features to direct educators’ noticing to aspects of the evidence that may be particularly fruitful for learning. 

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