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Teachers in rural schools have consistently faced challenges in accessing high-quality professional learning (PL). Approximately 150 rural teachers in four states received intensive, online summer PL paired with a variety of Modest Supports throughout the following school year. We used Picciano’s multi-modal online educational model in characterizing the online summer PL and to evaluate the effectiveness of the Modest Supports. End-of-year surveys and interviews with teachers asked about their experiences with and perceptions of the Modest Supports. Initial descriptive statistics and thematic analysis found that teachers reported using the collaborative Modest Supports much more frequently than others and that they were more helpful and created a sense of community within the project while also supporting their NGSS learning and implementation. 

Despite the intent to advance engineering education with the NGSS, teachers across all grade levels lack confidence in their engineering content knowledge and pedagogy (Hammack & Ivey, 2019). This dilemma is exacerbated by a lack of quality NGSS-aligned curricular materials that integrate science and engineering at the elementary grades— currently, only one elementary unit reviewed by Achieve has received an NGSS Design Badge that includes engineering (NextGenScience, 2020), and these materials are especially unavailable in schools serving high-needs students (Banilower, 2019). Implementation research now acknowledges that contexts and conditions can, and often do, affect the enactment of innovations and that “improving education requires processes for changing individuals, organizations, and systems” (Century & Cassata, 2016, p. 172). Due to geographic location and, often, smaller collegial networks of teachers who teach science, and engineering, rural schools encounter acute challenges in recruiting and retaining teachers (Arnold et al., 2005) and providing content-specific Professional Learning (PL) (Harmon & Smith, 2007). The goal of this NSF DRK12 multi-institution project is to longitudinally investigate the impacts, sustainability, and costs of NGSS implementation, especially in rural contexts. Our approach differs from most interventions in that it is tailored to rural educators in grades 3–5 and offers curriculum-agnostic, fully online PL that supports teachers in utilizing resources and phenomena found in their local contexts to develop and implement engaging, NGSS-aligned engineering instruction. Our intervention began with a five-day (i.e., weeklong) online PL experience in the summer of 2023 for grades 3–5 teachers in each of four western states. Examples of PL sessions provided include: (1) an overview of three-dimensional learning and phenomena-based instruction; (2) a deep dive into the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs); (3) instructional practices that encourage equitable student participation and epistemic agency; and (4) building understanding and comfort with NGSS-aligned engineering and design-based instruction for the elementary grades. The initial intensive PL experience had immediate positive impacts on grades 3–5 teachers’ attitudes and efficacy for teaching engineering. We are now exploring how modest supports influence the sustainability of these changes. Over the 2023-2024 academic year, we are providing teachers with a menu of modest supports including: three 90-minute-long online PL meetings each semester, materials for teaching a locally focused engineering design task, and access to a variety of electronic supports (e.g., Google Classroom Site, shared resources). The fall semester online meetings have focused on supporting teachers to identify connections to science and engineering in their school’s community and how to develop NGSS-aligned engineering design tasks that connect to their local communities. Teachers will be implementing their engineering lessons during December 2023 and January 2024.