Assessing High School Science Teachers’ Nature of Engineering (NOE) Perceptions with an Open-ended NOE Instrument (Fundamental)

Abstract

Vegas (UNLV). She holds a PhD and Master of Science in Engineering and Master of Education from UNLV and a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to graduate studies, Erica joined Teach for America and taught high school chemistry in Las Vegas. While her primary research involves water and wastewater, she has strong interests in engineering education research, teacher professional development, and secondary STEM education.

Toward developing a valid and reliable assessment of adults' nature of engineering views

“…Similarly, Kaya et al (2017) observed that pre‐service elementary teachers lack NOE understanding, which makes it challenging to teach their students. Although Marti et al (2017) and Marti et al (2018) noted that in‐service secondary science teachers have more informed but unsophisticated NOE views, the instruments used to assess participants' NOE views in these studies addressed only a subset of NOE tenets and were thus unable to fully capture the respondents' NOE understandings. However, this shortcoming was partly due to the fact that existing NOE instruments were limited in their scope, prompting Deniz, Kaya, et al (2020) to develop the Views of Nature of Engineering Questionnaire version A (VNOE‐A).…”

“…Nonetheless, Deniz, Kaya, et al (2020) recognized the VNOE‐A limitations, acknowledging that the instrument does not gauge some of the NOE aspects that the NGSS addresses (e.g., empirical and social NOE aspects) and that its composition could have been more diverse. On the other hand, the preliminary versions of the VNOE‐A questionnaire were adopted to assess pre‐service elementary teachers' (Kaya et al, 2017), in‐service high school science teachers' (Marti et al, 2017), and in‐service secondary school science teachers' (Marti et al, 2018) NOE views. Evidence of validity for the instrument was strengthened as a result of these studies, but collecting a set of evidence for supporting the validity remains an ongoing process.…”

Cross-Cultural Training and Engineering: An Illustration Using Vietnamese Engineering Faculties’ Responses to Nature of Engineering Instrument (Work in Progress)

“…In another study, Marti et al [8] organized a graduate level summer course for in-service secondary science teachers. Teachers designed solar powered water heaters or water treatment systems by using the engineering design process.…”

“…In contrast to the quantitative research conducted by Deniz et al [13] and Kaya et al [6], Marti et al [7,8] conducted qualitative case studies to assess teachers' NOE views. In examining two NOE studies [13,8], it is apparent that secondary teachers held better understanding of NOE aspects when compared to the elementary teachers, but the secondary teachers still hold partially informed NOE views at the onset. On the other hand, training helps learners to improve their NOE views.…”

“…For the last 10 years, there is a continuous increase in the number of research attempts in engineering education, and a relatively increased growth in emphasis on Nature of Engineering (NOE) research [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Although still a developing area, a handful of NOE research findings demonstrate that instructors and students hold an inadequate understanding of NOE [4,6].…”