Investigating Elementary Teachers’ Tensions and Mitigating Strategies Related to Integrating Engineering Design-Based Science Instruction

Developing pre-service primary teachers’ understanding of engineering through engineering habits of mind and engagement with engineers

“…Through either route students train to teach a broad range of subjects since primary teachers are normally expected teach across most subjects in the curriculum to their class, although within the training programme they would normally would have the opportunity to specialise. On all routes, student teachers spend a minimum of 24 weeks in school (DfE, n.d.) Although primary teachers would appear to be in a strong position to teach integrated engineering projects because they normally teach across all areas of the curriculum (Pope, 2019) a frequently cited barrier to doing this is PSTs' lack of content knowledge, not only in engineering but in the actual STEM subjects they are training to teach, such as technology (Avsec and Sajdera, 2019;Bencze, 2010;Lee et al 2020;McRobbie et al 2000), science (Radloff and Capobianco, 2019) and computing (Bell et al 2016). This leaves them feeling unprepared to teach engineering (Bir et al 2017;Coppola, 2019), despite their awareness of its importance (Bir et al 2017;Kurup et al 2019;Margot and Kettler, 2019).…”

“…The widespread response of teacher educators to these challenges is to introduce PSTs to the engineering design process (EDP) as the vehicle for learning to teach engineering projects (Aydeniz and Bilican, 2018;Coppola, 2019;Lin and Williams, 2017;Mativo and Park, 2012;Radloff and Capobianco, 2019;Wendell et al 2019;Winarno et al 2020). However, most students starting primary teacher-training are unlikely to have had much exposure to engineering design at school (Dalvi et al 2020).…”

“…However, most students starting primary teacher-training are unlikely to have had much exposure to engineering design at school (Dalvi et al 2020). Science students may struggle to understand the difference between science and engineering (Pleasants and Olson, 2019) and their ways of thinking (Dalvi et al 2020), not being able to distinguish between the controlled experimentation of scientific inquiry and the iterative nature of engineering design (Radloff and Capobianco, 2019). This can lead to them misrepresenting engineering in the classroom and downplaying the importance of problem-solving and creativity (Aydeniz and Cakmakci, 2017).…”

“…Many PSTs hold entrenched views about how subjects should be taught, based on their own educational experience in which posing problems and habits of mind were most likely missing (Dalvi et al 2020), and they are hard to change (McRobbie et al 2000) but active learning pedagogies modelled by their lecturers can modify their attitude and develop their confidence and ability to use design-based and student-centred learning approaches themselves (Bencze, 2010;Coppola, 2019;Radloff and Capobianco, 2019). Furthermore, students reported that their confidence to be more innovative and creative in lesson planning was increased when they actually taught their lessons to children rather than just planning them or completing design projects (Aston and Jackson, 2009;Coppola, 2019).…”

“…Furthermore, they could recall instances of EHoM behaviours after the lessons, so it is possible that given more time, they would be able to promote engineering thinking, using EHoM language, through science inquiries (Johnston et al 2019). They could have been guided by tutors to select more open-ended challenges with a client focus and through discussion appreciate the differences between science and engineering ways of approaching problem-solving (van Dooren et al 2020) but even experienced elementary teachers struggle to move between the controlled experimentation of science inquiry and the development of multiple possible solutions to a design problem (Radloff and Capobianco, 2019). Since their choice of topic did not initially accommodate the iterative nature of the design process, in a repetition of this exercise it would be advisable to engage in topics with a clearer engineering context and client focus.…”