From Knowing-About To Knowing-To: Development Of Engineering Pedagogical Content Knowledge By Elementary Teachers Through Perceived Learning And Implementing Difficulties

Abstract

The present study sought to reveal how elementary teachers develop their engineering pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) after leaving professional development programs to practice engineering teaching in real classroom settings. Participants of this study were the elementary teachers who received one-week training of engineering education provided by EfF (a P-12 Engineering teaching and learning institute in a Midwestern university). Data of this study were collected from these elementary teachers through face-to-face interviews and an online open-ended survey. Based on a phenomenological research method and a constructivist ELC (engineering instruction, learners, and contexts) framework developed by the researchers to investigate engineering PCK development, this study explored the elementary teachers’ lived engineering teaching experiences following the procedures of inductive qualitative data analysis. Findings yielded in this study revealed that the elementary teachers developed their knowledge about engineering teaching and learning situations through their engineering teaching practice. But such knowledge was the knowledge of knowing-about and it did not automatically transfer into the elementary teachers’ engineering PCK or knowing-to knowledge allowing them to act effectively and responsively to engineering teaching and learning situations at hand. In their engineering teaching practice, the elementary teachers engaged themselves in a dynamic and evolving trial-failure-success process. It was in this process that the elementary teachers made sense of new engineering teaching and learning situations and transformed their knowing-about into engineering PCK responsive to these situations.