Developing Teacher Noticing in Engineering in an Online Professional Development Program

This project will research how elementary (K-5) teachers in the Teacher Engineering Education Program (TEEP) program progress in one particular aspect of responsive teaching, noticing student thinking. Project research will also contribute to literature on how to support responsive teaching in web-based environments, expanding understanding of how design principles and features developed in in-person professional development settings can be implemented online. The project will refine a program for engineering teachers nationwide, identify key features that are effective in developing teachers' practice, and create video resources for other professional development programs to use.

Full Description

The project will research how elementary (K-5) teachers in the Teacher Engineering Education Program (TEEP) program progress in one particular aspect of responsive teaching, noticing student thinking. TEEP includes four graduate-level courses that help them learn engineering content and pedagogical approaches. There has been little investigation of teacher professional development in engineering design. The work that has been done focuses on increasing teachers' content knowledge and familiarity in engineering. Most teacher professional development and research focus on teachers learning engineering content and process, with less attention on helping teachers develop new instructional practices necessary to help students navigate the complex, ill-defined problems in engineering. TEEP focuses on helping teachers develop practices of responsive teaching in engineering design, where teachers base their instructional moves on what they notice in their students are doing and saying. Project research will also contribute to literature on how to support responsive teaching in web-based environments, expanding understanding of how design principles and features developed in in-person professional development settings can be implemented online. The project will refine a program for engineering teachers nationwide, identify key features that are effective in developing teachers' practice, and create video resources for other professional development programs to use.

The project will address three research questions: (1) What do beginning engineering teachers notice in students' engineering design work? (2) What shifts occur in teachers' noticing over the course of a professional development program focused on responsive teaching and how do these shifts correlate with key features of the program? (3) What shifts occur in how teachers' talk about their goals for students' engineering and their instructional practice? The project will conduct independent analyses from two cohorts of teachers of three data streams: pre-post interviews about practice; teacher-captured classroom videos; video-stimulated interviews, and teachers' coursework. The analyses will then connect these analyses to address the research questions. Videocases of students' engineering will be disseminated for other teacher educators to use in supporting teacher noticing. The research outcomes of the research will not only advance our understandings of teacher learning, but will provide evidence that teachers can recognize, value, and leverage students' diverse resources for engineering. Research on the TEEP program will also provide much-needed empirical support on whether and how online programs can be effective for teachers' instructional practice.

PROJECT KEYWORDS

Project Materials