Preschool teachers learn to teach the engineering design process (research-to-practice)

Abstract

Nationally, engineering has been in the spotlight since the advent of the Next Generation Science Standards, which includes a focus on engineering practices and engineering-specific standards. Locally, our state added pre-kindergarten to our NGSS-aligned standards. The new expectations for learning engineering has put pressure on teachers to include engineering as part of their curricula. Teaching engineering involves a different way of approaching curricula than what many teachers are used to, with its focus on open-ended, multi-answer problems. Few to no preschool teachers have a background in engineering, yet many believe engineering is important to teach young children. The four preschool teachers in this study had a beginning knowledge of and positive attitudes toward teaching engineering. Block play and building structures like bridges and ramps, a natural beginning to engineering thinking as children construct, test the limits of, revise, and rebuild their structures, was a common occurrence in this preschool. For teachers who are beginning to learn about and implement the engineering design process (EDP), long-term projects that bring children though a full design process is ideal so the EDP is not overshadowed by children excited with short-term, hands-on activities. As such, the research question guiding this study was: How does preschool teachers' knowledge of and confidence with teaching the EDP evolve over the course of a long-term engineering project? The preschool teachers were guided by the researcher to explicitly include the EDP in a six-week project for children to redesign the outdoor play area while expanding their engineering curriculum to include tasks less familiar to the children. This was a qualitative research study using modified lesson study and participant observation. All planned lessons and related activities were video recorded, and teacher planning sessions were audio recorded. Data was analyzed using open and axial coding. Findings from this study showed that the preschool teachers' ability to plan for and implement specific components of the EDP improved over the course of the six-week study, moving from the researcher having to consistently remind the teachers of the EDP and the teachers unsure about how to include steps, to the teachers being able to plan for these on their own and with minimal prompting by the researcher. The teachers struggled more, although showed improvement, with their ability to connect to the EDP while teaching the children and be explicit with them about how they were engaging in the EDP. Implications include a consideration of how to help early childhood teachers who are novices with engineering explicitly plan for and include the EDP within long-term projects.