Background: Engineering's introduction into K-12 classrooms has been purported to support meaningful and inclusive learning environments. However, teachers must contend with dominant discourses embedded in US schooling that justify inequitable distributions of resources. Purpose: Drawing on Gee's notion of discourses, we examine how teachers…

This article describes the creation of a university-based cross-disciplinary collaboration with elementary schools to address the challenges faced by teacher preparation programs in providing preservice teachers opportunities to design integrated STEM learning environments. The partnership focused on the design of an electric car unit and…

As we prepare teachers to provide students with opportunities within STEM education, authentic experiences should guide the instruction. Unfortunately, due to the novel integration of engineering into national reform documents, there is a dearth of documentation on elementary preservice teachers' engineering ideas as they align with student goals…

Pupils benefit from adaptive instruction and feedback from their teachers. A prerequisite for providing adaptive instruction is that teachers' diagnostic ability enables them to correctly perceive their pupils' skill level. A short course has been developed to improve primary school teachers' diagnostic ability for engineering. Based on…

Background: This systematic review of the literature on Latiné/x/a/o students in engineering was motivated by the recent increase in interest and thus scholarship about this population and the need for a nuanced understanding of the population's diversity. Purpose: This article's purpose is to provide a basis for critically exploring how…

The purpose of this study was to address issues of potential gender bias in pre-service elementary teachers' conceptions of engineers and engineering using Freire's (2018) "Critical Consciousness" perspective. By identifying the biasness as causal and structural attributions, the study also aimed to construct a critical pedagogy…

Model-eliciting activities (MEAs) challenge students to interpret a problem and collaboratively create solutions using the engineering design process. This Innovation to Practice article describes how science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teacher educators can use MEAs to build elementary teachers' understanding of computational…

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the relationship between academia and society focusing on how technical universities perform Third Mission (TM) to promote knowledge outside the academic environment producing multiple benefits. Design/methodology/approach: This investigation is performed through the conceptual approach. The theoretical…

Engineering education is receiving increased attention, although teacher preparation for engineering in the elementary grades is not well understood. This study investigated the influences of an elementary science teaching methods course, focused specifically on elementary engineering, on teacher candidates' self-efficacy for teaching engineering…

Elementary teachers are navigating a curriculum landscape in which engineering activities now exist alongside science. Teacher education should prepare future elementary teachers to be critical curators of curriculum resources, which includes appraising the extent to which engineering and science activities authentically reflect those fields. To…

Learning to teach science using engineering design is a complex endeavor for elementary preservice teachers (PSTs). This entails helping PSTs understand students as sense makers and recognizing ways to notice, respond, and leverage their students' ideas throughout the design process. In this study, we follow a cohort of elementary PSTs through a…

Due to the substantial emphasis on engineering in K-12 science education efforts in the USA, it is important for teachers to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of engineering (NOE) and the relationship between engineering and science. A deep understanding is characterized not only by the presence or absence of ideas but also by the…

National reform documents and shifts in educational standards have continued to highlight the importance of engineering and engineering practices within science literacy. High-quality engineering opportunities must be present in formal education due to their association with problem-solving and critical thinking. Given this directive to reach…

Teachers can play critical roles in challenging or reinscribing dominant narratives about what counts as STEM, who is seen within STEM disciplines, and how these disciplines should be taught. However, teachers have often experienced STEM in limited ways in their own education and are thereby provided with few resources for re-imagining these…

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) promote a new vision of K-12 science education that emphasizes the importance of integrating engineering practices into science education. Recent engineering studies have highlighted design approaches that focus on designers' empathy, such as human-centered design (Hess & Fila,…