Lottero-Perdue, P. S., & Parry, E. A. (2015, June), Elementary Teachers’ Reported Responses to Student Design Failures  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/p.23930

\bibitem{asee_peer_23930}
  Lottero-Perdue, P. S., \& Parry, E. A. (2015, June), \emph{Elementary Teachers’ Reported Responses to Student Design Failures}
  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington.
  10.18260/p.23930

Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue and Elizabeth Anne Parry.  "Elementary Teachers’ Reported Responses to Student Design Failures".  2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2015.  https://peer.asee.org/23930 Internet.  20 Mar, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_23930}
  Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue and Elizabeth Anne Parry.
  "Elementary Teachers’ Reported Responses to Student Design Failures".
  \emph{2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2015.
  https://peer.asee.org/23930 Internet.  20 Mar, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_23930
author = "Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue and Elizabeth Anne Parry"
title = "Elementary Teachers’ Reported Responses to Student Design Failures"
booktitle = "2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2015"
month = "June"
address = "Seattle, Washington"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/23930}
number = {10.18260/p.23930}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -           Elementary Teachers’ Reported Responses to Student Design          Failures and Explicit Talk about Failure During Instruction                             (Research-to-Practice)         In this mixed-methods, empirical study we explore how elementary teachers respondwhen students’ engineered designs fail to meet design criteria. It responds to arguments thatfailure, a normative aspect of engineering practice, should receive explicit attention in K-12classrooms.1 It is further supported by growth mindset research, which asserts the importance ofstudents learning from failure experiences.2 Finally, it builds upon recent research suggestingthat teachers may be disinclined to use words like fail or failure in elementary classrooms.3        This study includes quantitative and qualitative analysis of pre- and post-teaching surveydata from 110 upper elementary teachers participating in a multi-state research project. Includedis a pre-teaching survey question that queried teachers’ perspectives on the word, failure. Thepost-teaching survey was given after teachers had taught either one (52 teachers) or twoEngineering is Elementary (EiE) units (58) during one academic year. It asked how teachersresponded to students whose designs were unsuccessful by checking “all that apply” from a listof 13 possible responses; six responses (“f-responses”) included the words fail, failed, or failure.Additionally, teachers could add their own unique responses.        A subset of eight teachers participated in both pre- and post-teaching interviews. Thirty-minute interviews were semi-structured in format, audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzedusing grounded theory. Pre-teaching interviews explored teachers’ perceptions of failure andtheir use of words like fail and failure in the classroom. Post-teaching interviews addressed theuse of these words during engineering instruction, and probed teachers about how theyresponded to design failures.         Both before and after teaching, and on surveys and in interviews, few teachers reportedthat they used the words fail or failure in their classrooms. Rather, they used euphemisms (e.g.,“didn’t work”). Four of the six possible f-responses to students who had unsuccessful designswere the least reported of the 13 total possible responses. The other two, however, were selectedby nearly half of the survey teachers. One was, “How can you prevent a similar failure in thefuture?” Significantly more two-unit teachers than one-unit teachers reported using f-responses(t-test; significance < 0.05). This suggests that either the nature of the additional unit (bridgedesign unit) or the experience of teaching more units was influential; we suspect both werefactors.        One third of survey participants offered additional responses beyond the 13 “check-all-that-apply” responses; of those, few (<10%) included the words fail, failed, or failure, and morethan half focused on helping students improve their designs. Post-teaching interview datasuggested teachers had a growing comfort with: 1) using fail or failure words in the context ofstudent design improvement; and 2) creating a fail-safe classroom environment by encouragingresilient responses to design failure (e.g., by encouraging failure analysis and improvement).These findings have implications for both teacher and student learning in engineering.References1. Cunningham, C., & Carlsen, B. (in press). Precollege engineering education. In S.K. Abell &   N. Lederman (Eds.). Handbook of Research in Science Education (2nd edition) (p. xxx-xxx).   Taylor & Francis.2. Dweck, C.S. (2008). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books: New York.3. Author reference
AU  - Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue
AU  - Elizabeth Anne Parry
CY  - Seattle, Washington
DA  - 2015/06/14
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Elementary Teachers’ Reported Responses to Student Design Failures
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/23930
DO  - 10.18260/p.23930
ER  -