Responsive Teaching in Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Formative assessment is often conceptualized as an ongoing, informal process wherein instructors elicit and assess student thinking within the context of existing classwork. They can then use this feedback to make adjustments to their teaching. Some researchers, while agreeing with this definition, argue that much of the existing formative assessment research focuses on what teachers do, rather than what students think. Instead, they reframe formative assessment as responsive teaching, an instructional approach in which teachers elicit student thinking around a particular topic, notice and interpret the disciplinary substance contained within students’ thinking, and then respond in real-time in order to support students’ disciplinary behaviors. Responsive teaching has been studied for some time in K-12 mathematics and science education, and it has recently become a focus in K-12 engineering education. However, to our knowledge no research has investigated responsive teaching in undergraduate engineering education. We intend to begin a conversation about this important area of study through three specific aims of this paper: 1) introduce new engineering educators to prior research on responsive teaching, 2) discuss how formative assessment was used in two undergraduate engineering science courses and investigate whether these practices afford responsive teaching, and 3) suggest ways new engineering educators can incorporate responsive teaching practices into their own teaching.