Engineering

This study investigates the integration of early science with mathematics and engineering and involves co-designing resources with preschool teachers and families from historically underserved communities to provide preschool children equitable STEM learning experiences. The study also explores connections between home and school learning and involves designing resources to support multilingual learners, who represent a large (and growing) proportion of the population served in public preschool programs.

The Teacher Engineering Education Program is designed to support teacher learning in engineering education in an 18-month online asynchronous program. In this project, we collected data from two cohorts of elementary teachers (N=26) including multiple interviews throughout the program, teachers’ video recordings of their classroom teaching, and their coursework in the four required courses. This poster summarizes our central findings on teacher learning in the program, looking at teachers’ noticing and pedagogical sensemaking in engineering.

Biologically-inspired design (BID) is a way of using principles from Nature to solve engineering design challenges. It is engaging, novel, and leverages sustainable technology produced by over 3 billion years of adaptation.

A challenge in teaching real-world computational thinking is that the thought process of solving a concrete problem can easily escalate into a complex mental model consisting of many abstract, intertwined moving parts that are often difficult for students to imagine and think through, preventing them from sorting out a solution and building up self-efficacy. Externalizing such a complicated mental process step by step through drawing representational diagrams piece by piece can be cognitively offloading.