A Comparative Study of Educator Backgrounds and Their Effect on Student Understanding of the Engineering Design Process and Engineering Careers, Utilizing an Underwater Robotics Program (RTP)
- Conference
- Location
-
Columbus, Ohio
- Publication Date
-
June 24, 2017
- Start Date
-
June 24, 2017
- End Date
-
June 28, 2017
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
-
Pre-College Engineering Education Division
- Tagged Topic
-
Diversity
- Page Count
-
24
- DOI
-
10.18260/1-2--27453
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/27453
- Download Count
-
713
Paper Authors
J. Adam Scribner Ed.D. Stevens Institute of Technology
Manager of STEM Outreach for the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ.
Abstract
Numerous studies have demonstrated that educators having degrees in their subject areas significantly enhances student achievement, particularly in secondary mathematics and science (Chaney, 1995; Goe, 2007; Rowan, Chiang, & Miller, 1997; Wenglinsky, 2000). Yet, science teachers in states that adopt the Next Generation Science Standards are facilitating classroom engineering activities despite the fact that few have backgrounds in engineering. This quantitative study analyzed ex-post facto data of 81 educators and 2,455 students who participated in WaterBotics, an innovative underwater robotics program for middle and high school students. This study investigated if educators having backgrounds in engineering (i.e., undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering) positively affected student learning on two engineering outcomes: 1) the engineering design process, and 2) understanding of careers in engineering (who engineers are and what engineers do).
The results indicated that educators having backgrounds in engineering did not significantly affect student understanding of the engineering design process or careers in engineering when compared to educators having backgrounds in science, mathematics, technology education, or other disciplines. There were, however, statistically significant differences between the groups of educators. Students of educators with backgrounds in technology education had the highest mean score on assessments pertaining to the engineering design process while students of educators with disciplines outside of STEM had the highest mean scores on instruments that assess for student understanding of careers in engineering. This might be due to the fact that educators who lack degrees in engineering but who teach engineering do a better job of “sticking to the script” of engineering curricula.
Scribner, J. A. (2017, June), A Comparative Study of Educator Backgrounds and Their Effect on Student Understanding of the Engineering Design Process and Engineering Careers, Utilizing an Underwater Robotics Program (RTP) Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27453
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2017 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015