Engineering within K-12 from the Teacher’s Perspective: Effectively Integrating Engineering Activities Tied to Educational Standards

Reports such as the National Academies’ “Engineering in K-12 Education: Understanding the Status and Improving the Prospects” describe the importance of effectively incorporating engineering concepts into the K-12 curriculum. However, as stated in “Standards for K–12 Engineering Education?” developing stand-alone engineering standards is not currently recommended for a number of reasons including “although theoretically possible to develop standards for K–12 engineering education, it would be extremely difficult to ensure their usefulness and effective implementation” at this time, in part because “there is not at present a critical mass of teachers qualified to deliver engineering instruction.” Ohio Northern University is in its second year of workshops designed to introduce hands-on engineering concepts into the classrooms primarily within grades 5-10. The series of workshops involves a detailed introduction to the revised educational standards in the state of Ohio. Handson activities designed to introduce engineering concepts while specifically addressing these standards are introduced to the teachers along with success stories. Free and readily accessible lesson plans are from the IEEE sponsored tryengineering.org web site, TED.com and Engineering Go For it, eGRI.com are used. The intent was to introduce and assess teacher background knowledge on topics that their students should see in the years just before and after their grade level. Unique to this workshop is the consistent attention to specific math and science standards addressed, as well as the use of an engineering design process as a problem solving tool. The first year of the program culminated with a symposium, where teachers demonstrated the successes from their classrooms. Teachers in the second cohort were given access to web resources designed to illustrate the content from previous grades (to give an idea of realistic expectations) and following grades (to understand what is expected from their grade). Teachers were given a week-long, in-depth introduction to robotics, rocketry or Lego Mindstorm programming and their ties to their educational standards. The paper will describe the results of the assessment from participating teachers and describe the implementation of the program for those institutions interested in building upon these efforts. Specifically of interest, establishing a concrete tie from these engineering activities to relevant educational standards, allowing teachers to actually implement these activities in their classroom.