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1. Teacher Experiences in a Community-Based Rural Partnership: Recognizing Community Assets

   https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1316  

   Paradise, T.; Schilling, M.R.; Grohs, J.; Laney, J. (January 2022, Journal of precollege engineering education research)

   The purpose of this research study is to understand teacher experiences throughout their second year of engagement in the Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools partnership. This partnership is an assets-based community partnership in a rural environment between middle school teachers, regional industry, and university affiliates that is focused on implementing recurrent, hands-on, culturally relevant engineering activities for middle school students. This qualitative study uses constant comparative methodology informed by grounded theory on teacher interviews to capture both teacher experiences in the partnership as well as teacher-identified assets in their classrooms and school communities. Using the sensitizing concepts of pedagogical content knowledge, self-efficacy, and the Interconnected Model of Teacher Growth, this study found that while teachers experienced the program differently depending on their contextual setting of their schools, all teachers expressed shifts in their recognition of and value placed on community assets. Findings also suggest that teachers greatly value involving industry and university partners in the classroom to highlight the applications of engineering in their communities and support a reimagination of engineering conceptions and careers for both students and teachers. Teachers reported that the hands-on, team-based, culturally relevant engineering activities engaged learners and showcased individual strengths in ways they otherwise do not see exhibited in their traditional curriculum. The partnership ultimately allowed teachers to identify how assets in schools’ rural communities, beyond those previously identified within their schools, could aid them in further developing and implementing engineering activities. With teachers serving as role models for students, it is important to support teachers’ reimagination of engineering conceptions and integration into the classroom to ultimately increase students’ engineering engagement. Our findings highlight the value of community-based approaches in supporting engineering integration in the classroom and describe the assets that teachers note as being the most significant in their community. 

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2. Engagement in Practice: Lessons Learned Partnering with Science Educators and Local Engineers in Rural Schools

   Lesko, H. L.; Grohs, J. R.; Matusovich, H. M.; Kirk, G. R.; Carrico, C.; van Montfrans, V.; Gillen, A. L.; Paradise, T.; Blackowski, S. A.; Baum, L. M. (June 2018, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Our NSF-funded ITEST project focuses on the collaborative design, implementation, and study of recurrent hands-on engineering activities with middle school youth in three rural communities in or near Appalachia. To achieve this aim, our team of faculty and graduate students partner with school educators and industry experts embedded in students’ local communities to collectively develop curriculum to aim at teacher-identified science standard and facilitate regular in-class interventions throughout the academic year. Leveraging local expertise is especially critical in this project because family pressures, cultural milieu, and preference for local, stable jobs play considerable roles in how Appalachian youth choose possible careers. Our partner communities have voluntarily opted to participate with us in a shared implementation-research program and as our project unfolds we are responsive to community-identified needs and preferences while maintaining the research program’s integrity. Our primary focus has been working to incorporate hands-on activities into science classrooms aimed at state science standards in recognition of the demands placed on teachers to align classroom time with state standards and associated standardized achievement tests. Our focus on serving diverse communities while being attentive to relevant research such as the preference for local, stable jobs attention to cultural relevance led us to reach out to advanced manufacturing facilities based in the target communities in order to enhance the connection students and teachers feel to local engineers. Each manufacturer has committed to designating several employees (engineers) to co-facilitate interventions six times each academic year. Launching our project has involved coordination across stakeholder groups to understand distinct values, goals, strengths and needs. In the first academic year, we are working with 9 different 6th grade science teachers across 7 schools in 3 counties. Co-facilitating in the classroom are representatives from our project team, graduate student volunteers from across the college of engineering, and volunteering engineers from our three industry partners. Developing this multi-stakeholder partnership has involved discussions and approvals across both school systems (e.g., superintendents, STEM coordinators, teachers) and our industry partners (e.g., managers, HR staff, volunteering engineers). The aim of this engagement-in-practice paper is to explore our lessons learned in navigating the day-to-day challenges of (1) developing and facilitating curriculum at the intersection of science standards, hands-on activities, cultural relevancy, and engineering thinking, (2) collaborating with volunteers from our industry partners and within our own college of engineering in order to deliver content in every science class of our 9 6th grade teachers one full school day/month, and (3) adapting to emergent needs that arise due to school and division differences (e.g., logistics of scheduling and curriculum pacing), community differences across our three counties (e.g., available resources in schools), and partner constraints. 

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3. All in the Ohana: A Model to Develop and Sustain Community Partnerships with Teachers and Schools

   Pinner, PC (October 2025, medalliance@meducationalliance.org)

   Science education integrates the study of and practices from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). At the fundamental level, the pedagogy involves teaching and learning that emphasizes the use of scientific inquiry and the engineering design process to develop students’ problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration skills. Unfortunately, funding and professional development for teachers, which is essential to assure successful implementation of science lessons to increase the potential for student achievement, is lacking. Therefore, this NSF-funded science-education research project explored the development of a model that deepens the existing partnerships among grass-roots, non-profit community education organizations, K-12 public schools, and local university partners. Together, they worked collaboratively to develop systems where teachers could implement high-quality, place-based, NGSS-aligned science learning opportunities that actively engage students. This research project may lead to a future proposal for high-quality professional development for teachers, using the Teacher-to-Teacher professional development model, with the goal of impacting student achievement in science. The goals of this research project were to (1) develop a collaborative model that deepens community, public school, and university partnerships designed to support science educators and their students and (2) explore the current academic and social impact of the Teacher-to-Teacher professional development program as a possible solution for the development and implementation of high-quality, place-based, NGSS-aligned learning experiences for and with students. This presentation will focus on the components used to develop the partnership model with community partners, K-12 teachers and administrators, and university professors. Finally, the Teacher-to-Teacher (T2T) model and its new iteration, the Teacher-Plus-Community Partners T+CP Model will be shared for future development of place-based science learning experiences. 

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4. Changes in Teacher Self-efficacy Through Engagement in an Engineering Professional Development Partnership

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34272  

   Schilling, Malle; Paradise, Tawni; Grohs, Jacob; Matusovich, Holly; Carrico, Cheryl; Lesko, Holly; Kirk, Gary (June 2020, ASEE Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   K-12 teachers serve a critical role in their students’ development of interest in engineering, especially as engineering content is emphasized in curriculum standards. However, teachers may not be comfortable teaching engineering in their classrooms as it can require a different set of skills from which they are trained. Professional development activities focused on engineering content can help teachers feel more comfortable teaching the subject in their classrooms and can increase their knowledge of engineering and thus their engineering teaching self-efficacy. There are many different types of professional development activities teachers might experience, each one with a set of established best practices. VT PEERS (Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Communities) is a program designed to provide recurrent hands-on engineering activities to middle school students in or near rural Appalachia. The project partners middle school teachers, university affiliates, and local industry partners throughout the state region to develop and implement engineering activities that align with state defined standards of learning (SOLs). Throughout this partnership, teachers co-facilitate engineering activities in their classrooms throughout the year with the other partners, and teachers have the opportunity to participate in a two-day collaborative workshop every year. VT PEERS held a workshop during the summer of 2019, after the second year of the partnership, to discuss the successes and challenges experienced throughout the program. Three focus groups, one for each grade level involved (grades 6-8), were held during the summit for teachers and industry partners to discuss their experiences. None of the teachers involved in the partnership have formal training in engineering. The transcripts of these focus groups were the focus of the exploratory qualitative data analyses to answer the following research question: How do middle-school teachers develop teaching engineering self-efficacy through professional development activities? Deductive coding of the focus group transcripts was completed using the four sources of self-efficacy: mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological states. The analysis revealed that vicarious experiences can be particularly valuable to increasing teachers’ teaching engineering self-efficacy. For example, teachers valued the ability to play the role of a student in an engineering lesson and being able to share ideas about teaching engineering lessons with other teachers. This information can be useful to develop engineering-focused professional development activities for teachers. Additionally, as teachers gather information from their teaching engineering vicarious experiences, they can inform their own teaching practices and practice reflective teaching as they teach lessons. 

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5. Recruiting and Retaining Low-Income Engineering Students Across Four Institutions During a Pandemic: Progress and Lessons Learned from a Track 3 S-STEM Grant

   Castles, R.; Venters, C.; and Goodman, C (June 2022, 2022 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition)

   In January 2020 East Carolina University (ECU) in partnership with Lenoir Community College (LCC), Pitt Community College (PCC), and Wayne Community College (WCC) was awarded an S-STEM Track 3 Grant (Grant number: 1930497). The purpose of this grant was to support low-income students at each partner institution, to research best practices in recruiting and retaining low-income students at both universities and community colleges, and to research how such programs influence the transfer outcomes from two-year to four-year schools. This grant provides scholarship support for two cohorts of students, one starting their engineering studies in Fall 2020 and the other starting their engineering studies in Fall 2021. Each cohort was to be comprised of 40 students including 20 students at ECU and 20 students divided among the three partnering community colleges. In addition to supporting student scholarships, this grant supported the establishment of new student support mechanisms and enhancement of existing support systems on each campus. This project involved the creation of a faculty mentoring program, designing a summer bridge program, establishing a textbook lending library, and enhancing activities for students in a living-learning community, expansion of university tutoring initiatives to allow access for community college students, and promoting a new peer mentoring initiative. The program emphasizes career opportunities including promoting on-campus career fairs, promoting internship and co-op opportunities, and bringing in guest speakers from various industry partners. A goal of the program was to allow community college students to build relationships with university students and faculty so they can more easily assimilate into the student body at the university upon transfer. This paper presents the challenges presented to the project in the first year and the pivoting that occurred due the pandemic. Data is presented regarding recruitment of scholars in both cohorts and retention of scholars from year 1 to year 2. 

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