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International Forum on Research Excellence (IFoRE) Annual Conference, Washington, DC

This exploratory study sought to address the gap in STEM teacher preparation in elementary and secondary teacher education programs. Integrated STEM education is attracting increased attention from educators, politicians, STEM industries, and the media across the nation. Numerous state and national organizations have called for a new workforce of problem solvers, innovators, and inventors who are self-reliant and able to think logically, also suggesting that creating such capacity is one of the critical foundations that drive innovative capacity in the nation. A key to developing these skills is strengthening STEM competencies and career goals in every K–12 student. To do this, teachers must be educated on how to integrate STEM content into their curriculum. This study sought to explore teacher perceptions about their teacher preparation programs: strengths and gaps in their STEM preparatory experiences; and the potential to develop STEM micro-credentials to better prepare teachers to integrate STEM into their teaching. Participants included a combination of undergraduate preservice teachers and graduate early-career teachers. Researchers conducted open-ended questionnaires with participants to identify their STEM preparatory experiences, and their perspectives on a STEM micro-credential. Findings show that the majority of participants received very little to no STEM preparation. Further, participants were asked to share their perspectives on preferred type of professional development (PD) and STEM micro-credentials. Nearly all of the participants agreed that a self-paced micro-credential (blending online and in-person instruction) would be an effective format of PD. Findings suggest micro-credentials could be a successful solution for STEM PD.

Literacy Research Association (LRA) Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA

The Roundtable presentation describes a research project that is currently in progress at the Department of Early and Elementary Education. The project investigates the impact of maker education on pre-service teacher instruction when infused into an early literacy methods course (ELED 330: Integrated Language Arts, grades 3-6). We are currently investigating pre-service teacher use of maker educational practices when working with students in an upper-level literacy course (ELED 410: Literacy Assessment and Intervention; taken the semester following ELED 330), which has a clinical component in the May Literacy Center (literacy clinic based on campus), and in their internship settings (in a local public-school classroom). Work on publishing final results in academic and practitioner journals is ongoing.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Annual Conference , Nashville, TN

The presentation summarizes a research project studying the nature of social interactions that take place between preschool students with diverse social and emotional skills when engaging in engineering activities. While a variety of interventions have been designed to support preschool students with disabilities, they target foundational skills such as inviting peers to play and taking turns with materials, leaving a research gap on more complex social skills such as collaboration. Engineering encompasses hands-on activity, inquiry, and teamwork that develops a student’s collaboration and problem-solving skills. Given that preschool students with disabilities require further support in these skills, engineering activities provide naturally embedded opportunities for collaboration, and students’ engagement in engineering is a gap in the research that needs to be explored. In this study, four engineering activities were implemented over a four-week period. Analysis of video clips of student participation and teacher interviews revealed that students assigned responsibilities to each other and completed the activities in small groups, and other students who needed teacher support worked intermittently with peers. The importance of engineering activities in providing the platform for students with diverse needs to work together and engage in authentic peer interactions is discussed as was the implications of these findings and recommendations for practitioners.
This session will be helpful to two sets of audiences: a) audience members who have never used or implemented engineering in their classroom/profession: this session will break down and simplify engineering in preschool to the audience, especially its connection to social-emotional development and ways to connect engineering to their practice with young students; b) audience members who already design and implement engineering activities in their classrooms: this session will provide a toolkit of strategies to these audience members to take back to their classrooms and further implement.