Abstract
With the increasing emphasis on integrating engineering into K-12 classrooms to help meet the needs of our complex and multidisciplinary society, there is an urgent need to investigate teachers' engineering-focused professional development experiences as they relate to teacher learning, implementation, and student achievement. This study addresses this need by examining the effects of a professional development program focused on engineering integration, and how teachers chose to implement engineering in their classrooms as a result of the professional development. 198 teachers in grades 3–6 from 43 schools in 17 districts participated in a yearlong professional development program designed to help integrate the new state science standards, with a focus on engineering, into their teaching. Posters including lesson plans and student artifacts were used to assess teachers' engineering practices and the implementation in their classrooms. Results indicated that the majority of the teachers who participated in the professional development were able to effectively implement engineering design lessons in their classrooms suggesting that the teachers' success in implementing engineering lessons in their classroom was closely related to the structure of the professional development program.
Date of this Version
3-5-2014
DOI
10.1111/ssm.12061
Comments
This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: *Guzey, S.S., GTank, K.M., GWang, H.-H., Roehrig, G.H., & Moore, T.J. (March 5 2014). A high-quality professional development for teachers of grades 3-6 for implementing engineering into classrooms. School Science and Mathematics., which has been published in final form at 10.1111/ssm.12061. Authors are not required to remove preprints posted prior to acceptance of the submitted version.