Research Initiation: A Hybrid Community of Practice Model to Prepare Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Engineering

When pre-service teachers are provided with focused and effective training, they will be better equipped to provide engaging, relevant engineering experiences to K-12 students. Previous research has demonstrated that providing K-12 students access to these types of activities is critical to create a more engineering literate society, diversify the engineering workforce, and encourage and prepare more students to pursue engineering careers.

However, very few colleges and universities currently provide any training to prepare pre-service teachers to teach engineering, and although there are some courses that are currently being offered at a few institutions, there has been very little research into the effectiveness of these courses, and there is no clear guidance available on how to best prepare pre-service teachers to teach engineering effectively. In this project, pre-service teachers at the University of Tennessee Knoxville will complete a service learning course in which they interact directly with engineering students to learn about K-12 engineering education, develop lesson plans and projects that can be used both in the K-12 classroom and in informal educational settings, and work directly with K-12 students at after-school engineering clubs, virtual and in person STEM family nights, and other outreach activities.

The impact of participating in this type of course, which is structured to facilitate the development of a community of practice consisting of both pre-service teachers and engineering students, on pre-service teachers’ perceptions of engineers and engineering work and confidence in their own ability to teach engineering effectively will be examined. The ultimate goal of this work is to develop best practices and models for training pre-service teachers to teach engineering effectively.

This project will explore the ways in which participation in a hybrid community of practice affects pre-service teachers’ perceptions of engineering and teaching engineering self-efficacy. Pre-service teachers enrolled in the VolsTeach program at the University of Tennessee Knoxville will join engineering undergraduate students to complete a service learning course that is co-taught by faculty from engineering and education (EF 327 - Engineering Design in K-12 Education).

This course is structured to create a hybrid community of practice in which students collaborate with faculty and local K-12 teachers to develop relevant, engaging engineering-focused projects and activities that can be incorporated into K-12 classrooms. This course provides an ideal context to examine the ways in which this model of engagement affects pre-service teachers’ perceptions of engineering and teaching engineering self-efficacy.

This two phase project will use both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate how pre-service teachers’ perceptions of engineering and engineering teaching self-efficacy are affected by participation in this type of service learning course. In phase 1, the perceptions and self-efficacy of pre-service teachers who have not yet completed EF 327 will be explored, and the results of this phase of the project will be used to modify elements of the course to address the specific needs of these pre-service teachers.

In phase 2, the perceptions and self-efficacy of pre-service teachers who are currently enrolled in the course will be examined as they work collaboratively with engineering students. The overall goal of the project is to understand the ways in which pre-service teacher self-efficacy and perceptions are impacted by participation in this hybrid community of practice.

The knowledge generated from this project will inform the ways that pre-service teachers are prepared to teach engineering in the future.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.