EEE (Elementary Engineering Education) adoption and expertise development model: Conceptualizing, assessing, and tracking elementary teachers' EEE adoption and EEE expertise development

Abstract

EEE (Elementary Engineering Education) is an educational innovation. The purpose of this study was to construct an evidence-based EEE adoption and expertise development model to describe the staged development process of EEE adoption and EEE expertise development and to capture individual elementary teachers' differences in this process. Informed by Rogers's diffusion of innovation model, the Concerned Based Adoption Model (CBAM), and Dreyfus skill acquisition model, the present study investigated elementary teachers' EEE adoption and EEE expertise development. Data of this study were collected through face-to-face interviews (in 2008, 2009, and 2010) and open-ended online surveys (in 2009 and 2010) conducted among 73 elementary teachers who received one-week EEE training from an EEE professional development program. An analytic induction approach was adopted in the data analyses. Based on the data analysis results of this study an EEE adoption and expertise development model was constructed. This model is two-dimensional including the EEE adoption dimension and the EEE expertise development dimension. There are four classificatory categories in the EEE adoption dimension and three classificatory categories in the EEE expertise development dimension. The staged descriptive characterizations falling under each of the classificatory categories delineate respectively what the four EEE adoption stages and the five EEE expertise development stages are like. The EEE adoption and expertise development model is helpful for EEE professional development providers to conceptualize, assess, and track their elementary teacher learners' synchronic differences and diachronic progression in EEE adoption and EEE expertise development, and thus to provide their learners with effective and in-time support. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.