Search for: All records

This paper presents a case study of an elementary teacher, Holly, who participated in a federally funded summer professional development (PD) program aimed at integrating community-based engineering into elementary education. The study examines how Holly’s teaching practices and beliefs about teaching engineering contributed to the significant improvements in her students’ attitudes toward engineering and their perceptions of engineering as a potential career. Data were collected over three years through multiple methods, including post-PD interviews, lesson recordings, and a post-teaching interview. We analyzed classroom videos using a video analysis protocol. We used open coding to analyze the interviews. Once the analysis of the interviews and videos was completed, we engaged in a sense-making process to identify connections across data points (videos and interviews). Our findings showed that Holly extensively incorporated scientific inquiry into her lessons. This approach enabled students to develop their inquiry skills and facilitated a smooth transition to engineering design activities. By connecting class activities to the local context, students were able to see the relevance of engineering to their everyday lives and take ownership of their learning. This study emphasizes the potential of community-focused engineering to foster meaningful science and engineering practices in elementary education. 

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate how two primary preservice teachers built their engineering education identities during a clinical field experience that emphasized engineering education. More specifically, we explored the development of their engineering education identities while facing unforeseen circumstances and unfamiliar engineering content. We used a nested qualitative case study approach that was bounded by a university practicum field experience that took place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data sources included preservice teacher interviews and reflective field notes. We found that the preservice teachers faced a series of contextual factors in the clinical experience that both afforded and constrained professional learning opportunities that influenced their identity development. The affordances made professional learning opportunities possible, while the constraints limited professional growth. We also found that it was the negotiation of the factors, where the preservice teachers worked to mitigate the effect of the constraints while maximizing the advantages of the affordances, that had the greatest influence on their engineering pedagogical knowledge and engineering teaching self-efficacy. Findings from this study could provide teacher educators with insight into preparing primary teachers for unexpected challenges when teaching engineering, as well as how to best prepare engineering-efficacious teachers.