Preparing teachers and university students to translate engineering research to K8 students in an after-school program

Abstract

Translating Engineering Research to K8 Students (TEK8) is a university-K8 partnership that has been designed and implemented as part of an outreach collaboration between the Colleges of Engineering and Education at The Ohio State University. The program aims to advance the broader impacts of federally funded engineering research while increasing urban middle school students' interest in engineering and preparing practicing teachers and engineering students to introduce middle school students to the engineering design process. This paper describes the TEK8 university-school partnership and presents results from a preliminary study conducted to examine the partnership's effectiveness for preparing teachers and engineering students to interest middle school students in engineering. Data were collected using interviews, observations, and a teacher self-efficacy survey. The survey was appropriated to focus on teachers' and engineering students' self-efficacy to interest middle school students in engineering. Methods of analysis included discourse analysis, the constant comparative method, and the nonparametric 1-tailed Wilcoxon signed rank test. Results reveal that the university course increased teachers' and engineering students' self-efficacy to interest middle school students in engineering. A discussion is provided on pre-engineering education in after-school settings and realizing broader impacts of STEM research through K12 outreach. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2014.