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

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Conference

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Salt Lake City, Utah

Publication Date

June 23, 2018

Start Date

June 23, 2018

End Date

July 27, 2018

Conference Session

Teacher Attitudes, Beliefs, & Self-efficacy

Tagged Division

Pre-College Engineering Education

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

35

DOI

10.18260/1-2--29821

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/29821

Download Count

828

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Paper Authors

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Erica J. Marti University of Nevada, Las Vegas Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-1773-4599

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Dr. Erica Marti is an Assistant Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las 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.

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Erdogan Kaya University of Nevada, Las Vegas Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-3211-3259

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Kaya is a PhD student in science education at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is working as a research assistant and teaching science methods courses. Prior to beginning the PhD program, he received his MS degree in computer science and engineering and holds a BS degree in chemical engineering. He taught K-12 STEM+CS for seven years. Additionally, he coached robotics teams and was awarded several grants that promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and Computer Science(CS) education. He is also interested in improving STEM+CS education for minorities. He has been volunteering in many education outreach programs including Science Fair and Robotics programs such as First Robotics competitions. Areas of research interest include engineering education, STEM+CS, and robotics in K-12 education. Kaya advocates his view that research, teaching and learning are best practiced as a unified enterprise that benefits students and society. He has received numerous teaching awards as well as grants for his research from several foundations. Kaya is an active member of AERA, ASEE, ASTE, NARST, and NSTA, has presented at over 15 conferences, published in ranked journals (e.g. Journal of College Science Teaching), reviewed conference proposals (e.g ASEE).

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Hasan Deniz University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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Hasan Deniz is an Associate Professor of Science Education at University of Nevada Las Vegas. He teaches undergraduate, masters, and doctoral level courses in science education program at University of Nevada Las Vegas. His research agenda includes epistemological beliefs in science and evolution education. He is recently engaged in professional development activities supported by several grants targeting to increase elementary teachers’ knowledge and skills to integrate science, language arts, and engineering education within the context of Next Generation Science Standards.

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Ezgi Yesilyurt University of Nevada, Las Vegas Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-1444-1048

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Ezgi Yesilyurt is a PhD student in curriculum and instruction/science education at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is working as a graduate assistant and teaching science methods courses. She received her MS degree and BS degree in elementary science education. She participated European Union Projects in which she conducted series of professional development programs for in-service science teachers. Areas of research interest are engineering education, inquiry learning and evolution education.

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Johana Iglesias University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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Johana Iglesias is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She helped to develop and manage NSF EPSCoR STEM high school outreach programs, including: a STEM career program (SISTEM) and the Summer Research Experience (REX) program for novice researchers.

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Abstract

The recent adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) by some states provides an opportunity to integrate engineering education in the K-12 science curricula. While engineering education research in K-12 is emerging, there is an expanding literature that focuses on the epistemology, philosophy and history of engineering education, specifically the Nature of Engineering (NOE). Although NOE aspects are not explicitly stated in NGSS, they are implicitly woven into the standards, and can be extracted through analysis of the document. NOE aspects, although reported in less than a dozen papers, show consistency among researchers, and a few examples include engineering as a distinct body of knowledge, the use of creativity in engineering, and social- and cultural-embeddedness. Teachers and students have a naive understanding of NOE, which can be enhanced through exposure to engineering instruction and the engineering design process. We believe that an introduction to NOE will improve K-12 engineering education. Specifically, understanding NOE allows learners to make sense of engineering and technology in daily life, helps learners to make informed decisions, causes learners to appreciate the contribution of engineering in our culture, assists learners in recognizing the ethical and moral values that engineers need to demonstrate, and aids in the teaching and learning of engineering instruction. However, NOE teaching is not an easy task, and a lack of NOE understanding also raises many issues and obstacles for science teachers to incorporate NOE in science instruction. Science teachers need training to fulfill the requirements described in the NGSS and to inform teachers about NOE aspects. To meet this goal, we provided a professional development that focuses on NOE and the engineering design process during summer 2017 in a southwestern research institute. Using the cognitive apprenticeship model, secondary science teachers were exposed to an engineering design challenge, either by building solar thermal water heaters or water treatment systems. The teachers used the NGSS engineering design process and NOE aspects were explicitly taught at the beginning of the professional development. Four secondary science teachers’ NOE understanding was assessed by using an open-ended NOE questionnaire coupled with semi-structured interviews before and after the engineering design intervention. The following research question guided our case study research: To what extent did secondary science teachers NOE views change after exposure to an engineering design challenge? Our results show that at the end of the professional development teachers either kept well-articulated understanding of NOE aspects or improved them.

Marti, E. J., & Kaya, E., & Deniz, H., & Yesilyurt, E., & Iglesias, J. (2018, June), Assessing High School Science Teachers’ Nature of Engineering (NOE) Perceptions with an Open-ended NOE Instrument (Fundamental) Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--29821

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