Engineering Teachers’ Assessment Knowledge in Active and Project-Based Learning

Abstract

An instructional framework that can help students succeed in the current labor force is project-based learning (PBL), which entails students researching and creating projects that reflect their knowledge. PBL implementation has been recently mandated in the Israeli high school science and engineering curriculum, but its effective implementation is impeded by challenges that include the lack of professional guidelines for teachers on creating and assessing student projects. Responding to the need to train engineering teachers in PBL, this chapter describes a recent training initiative for a cohort of engineering teachers from a diverse population, including Arabs and Jews, with varying levels and subject areas of expertise. Rather than simply lecturing these teachers about PBL, the program required teachers to devise assessment criteria that they felt were relevant to their own teaching, to implement PBL and these criteria in their classrooms, and then to present their students’ projects to their fellow teachers. The research aim was to address two questions that are related to teachers’ knowledge of engineering education, teachers’ reflections of the best practices for implementing PBL, and the teachers’ classroom PBL competency. We found a gap between teachers’ declared knowledge of their own PBL proficiency and other knowledge types, especially their knowledge of assessing student learning. The theoretical and practical contributions of this study include guidelines for developing, validating, and applying a PBL training tool kit, a set of criteria for PBL assessment, and the first step of creating a PBL engineering education community of practice.