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Professional Development Activities for Secondary STEM Teachers and Students’ Engineering Content Knowledge and Attitudes

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Conference

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual On line

Publication Date

June 22, 2020

Start Date

June 22, 2020

End Date

June 26, 2021

Conference Session

Pre-college Engineering Education Division Technical Session 4

Tagged Division

Pre-College Engineering Education

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--35089

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/35089

Download Count

391

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Paper Authors

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Emel Cevik Texas A&M University

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Michael Johnson Texas A&M University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-5328-8763

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Dr. Michael D. Johnson is a professor in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University. Prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M, he was a senior product development engineer at the 3M Corporate Research Laboratory in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University and his S.M. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Johnson’s research focuses on engineering education; design tools; specifically, the cost modeling and analysis of product development and manufacturing systems; and computer-aided design methodology.

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Bugrahan Yalvac Texas A&M University

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Bugrahan Yalvac is an associate professor of science and engineering education in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M University, College Station. He received his Ph.D. in science education at the Pennsylvania State University in 2005. Prior to his current position, he worked as a learning scientist for the VaNTH Engineering Research Center at Northwestern University for three years. Yalvac’s research is in STEM education, 21st century skills, and design and evaluation of learning environments informed by the How People Learn framework.

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Jennifer Whitfield Texas A&M University

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Dr. Jennifer Whitfield received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Mathematics Education in 2017. Her M.S. and B.A are both in Mathematics. She joined the Mathematics Department at Texas A&M University as a Senior Lecturer in 2001. Dr. Whitfield has taught 13 different undergraduate and three graduate mathematics courses. She helped develop the Personalized Precalculus Program, has overseen the operations of the Math Placement Exam, is the Associate Director of the Center for Technology Mediated Instruction, Director of aggieTEACH, and has been instrumental in developing online math courses. Dr. Whitfield's research focuses on secondary mathematics teacher preparation and the effects of scholarships for high school science and math teachers. She has received over $2.2 million in external funding from the National Science Foundation and over $3.6 million in funding from other state, university, or private agencies. Dr. Whitfield has co-authored two peer-reviewed journal articles, one book chapter, and is the co-editor of a book. She has chaired six masters' committees and served on four others. Dr. Whitfield has received ten awards including the Distinguished Ph.D. Honor Graduate in 2017, Texas A&M Chancellor's Academy of Teacher Educators Award in 2014, and was an A&M Fish Camp Namesake in 2013.

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Mathew Kuttolamadom Texas A&M University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-3627-4885

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Dr. Mathew Kuttolamadom is an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution and the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering from Clemson University’s Int'l Center for Automotive Research. His professional experience is in the automotive industry including at the Ford Motor Company. At TAMU, he teaches Mechanics, Manufacturing and Mechanical Design to his students. His research thrusts include bioinspired functionally-graded composites, additive/subtractive manufacturing processes, laser surface texturing, tribology, visuo-haptic VR/AR interfaces and engineering education.

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Jay R. Porter Texas A&M University

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Jay R. Porter joined the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University in 1998 and is currently the Associate Dean for Engineering at Texas A&M University - Galveston. He received the BS degree in electrical engineering (1987), the MS degree in physics (1989), and the Ph.D. in electrical engineering (1993) from Texas A&M University. His areas of interest in research and education include product development, analog/RF electronics, instrumentation, and entrepreneurship.

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Joseph A. Morgan Texas A&M University

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Joseph A. Morgan has over 20 years of military and industry experience in electronics and communications systems engineering. He joined the Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution Department in 1989 and has served as the Program Director of the Electronics and Telecommunications Programs and as the Associate Department Head for Operations. He has served as Director of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer in the private sector and currently a partner in a small start-up venture. He received his BS degree in electrical engineering (1975) from California State University, Sacramento, and his MS (1980) and DE (1983) degrees in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University. His education and research interests include project management, innovation and entrepreneurship, and embedded product/system development.

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Abstract

To promote an integrated Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology (STEM) education in K-12 school levels and cultivate STEM literacy in the society, there is a growing interest in including engineering content in K-12 curricula. A review of literature suggests that teachers’ knowledge and attitudes towards the STEM fields are positively correlated with their students’ knowledge and attitudes towards the STEM fields. Hence, it is central to explore and document the characteristics and qualifications of the teachers in teaching engineering content.

This paper describes a two-week-long residential professional development (PD) activity designed for STEM teachers to improve their engineering content and attitudes and reports the findings from the descriptive and inferential quantitative analyses of the data collected at the PD workshops. Presented are the meaningful correlations among the teachers’ perceptions of and familiarity with design, engineering, and technology (DET) and their students’ STEM attitudes.

A group of faculty and researchers developed the engineering-focused PD workshops to instruct the teachers about the cutting-edge technologies related to the Internet of things (IoT) and additive manufacturing. The overarching goals of the project was to introduce underrepresented students to the authentic engineering activities and varied career opportunities in the STEM fields and improve students’ attitudes toward STEM through preparing their teachers to be effective in teaching these concepts in the classroom.

The two-week PD workshops were held at a Research I University campus in Summer 2017 and Summer 2018. Participating teachers learned about the basics of the engineering design principles, IoT technologies, computer-aided design tools, and additive manufacturing processes. The teachers also received training on how to develop lesson plans that incorporate the engineering content into the existing school curricula.

The research questions in this study were 1) to what extent did the teachers’ participation in the PD workshops affect their perceptions of engineering and their familiarity with teaching DET; and 2) What are the relations among teachers’ perceptions of engineering, familiarities with teaching the DET, and their students’ attitudes towards the STEM fields? The design of the study was a pre- and post-test survey. A DET survey was administered to the participating teachers before and after the PD workshop activities. The DET survey is a five-point Likert-scale that consists of 40 items. The instrument focused on measuring the participants’ perceptions and familiarity with the DET concepts. A S-STEM survey was also administrated to the teachers’ students at the beginning and the end of the school year. The S_STEM survey is a five-point Likert-scale with 37 items. The S_STEM survey captured the students’ attitudes towards the STEM fields and the 21st-century skills. In the paper we will describe the research conducted and discuss the implications for cultivating STEM literacy and integrated STEM education. Both pre- and post-comparison results and correlation results are presented.

Cevik, E., & Johnson, M., & Yalvac, B., & Whitfield, J., & Kuttolamadom, M., & Porter, J. R., & Morgan, J. A. (2020, June), Professional Development Activities for Secondary STEM Teachers and Students’ Engineering Content Knowledge and Attitudes Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35089

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