Partnering with K-12 Institutions to Prepare School Teachers for Engineering Education

Abstract

The Texas Tech University College of Engineering has been working for five years to develop and implement our Pre-college Engineering/Architecture Academy Program for K-12 institutions, but it was only when we began a teacher training program did the Academy begin to solidify into a program that empowers teachers to integrate engineering concepts and principles into the K-12 classroom.The Glenn Commission Report [1], the 2004 ASEE K-12 Workshop [2], NSF funding trends, and a growing number of other sources indicate wide consensus that the quality of K-12 teacher preparation needs to be improved---especially in the areas of math and science---and that the number of teachers teaching out of their disciplines is alarmingly high. In addition, very few public school teachers have a clear concept of the knowledge, skills, and disciplinary areas that define engineering, so teachers are typically ill-equipped to advise students about engineering careers and almost certainly lack the skills to develop hands-on activities that demonstrate engineering concepts. As an engineering college we found our expertise in developing engineering course content that worked within the myriad of constraints of K-12 environments is limited, at best. Hiring K-12 teachers to work with us in developing engineering resources within the core K-12 disciplines-math, science, language arts, and social sciences-has allowed us to train teachers to incorporate engineering content that aligns with state standards, so teachers are not required to create new courses, but to incorporate engineering into what they are already teaching. By partnering with K-12 institutions in Texas, we have been able to form a cadre of teachers to develop and teach the workshops as well as develop resource guides that align engineering content to state standards. This paper will discuss forming this cadre of teachers and developing the resources that support teacher training.

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