Background: Elementary educators are increasingly asked to teach engineering design, motivating study of how they learn to teach this discipline. In particular, there is a need to examine how teachers reason about pedagogical situations and dilemmas in engineering--how they draw on their disciplinary understandings, attention to students'…

Self-efficacy is a topic of great interest in elementary preservice and inservice teacher education given that elementary teachers often have low self-efficacy for STEM teaching. In this article, we synthesize the existing literature on science and engineering teaching self-efficacy to (1) explore trends in science and engineering teaching…

The paper reports about a study that examines changes in teachers' incorporation of epistemic practices in their design of engineering lessons and compares them to their views about the nature of engineering knowledge across 100 hours of professional development. Nineteen K-8 teachers in the USA, who were new to teaching engineering as part of a…

Elementary teachers are tasked with the challenge of implementing Next Generation Science Standards-aligned projects that integrate science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computer science (STEM + CS) in a variety of classroom contexts. This study investigates how teachers verbally support students in two classrooms, one general…

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…

Increased attention on the implementation of engineering education into elementary school classrooms aims to start preparing students early for potential engineering careers. In order to efficiently and effectively add engineering concepts to the curriculum, appropriate development and facilitation of engineering design challenges are required.…

Research indicates there is a need for teachers to experience multiple mastery experiences with engineering teaching in order to improve teaching engineering self-efficacy. To prepare future K-5 teachers to teach the engineering design process, one science methods course integrated 2-day engineering mini-units into the class meeting and…

Research indicates that teacher efficacy influences student achievement and is situation specific. With the Next Generation Science Standards calling for the incorporation of engineering practices into K-12 classrooms, it is important to identify teachers' engineering teaching efficacy. A study of K-5 teachers' engineering self-efficacy and…

We examined the use of an engineering learning cycle (ELC) model and in a course for K-8 inservice teachers for two purposes. First, we were interested in how the ELC would support teachers' science, mathematics, and engineering content knowledge. We were also interested in their confidence in their ability to adapt content for teaching using the…

Innovative and ambitious efforts are taking place to implement the new vision for science education--the Next Generation of Science Standards (NGSS) in the United States. To implement this new vision, teachers must reconsider how they use their science content knowledge (SCK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in new ways that require…

The aim of this study was to assess elementary teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of and confidence in their ability to support students in enacting the science and engineering practices (SEPs) of the Next Generation Science Standards. Findings from this study were used to inform the planning of a professional development program for…

Engineering has become an important subject in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which have raised engineering design to the same level as scientific inquiry when teaching science disciplines at all levels. Therefore, preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) need to know how to integrate the engineering design process (EDP) into their…

This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance science teaching. This month's issue describes preservice elementary teachers learning engineering principles from engineers. Few elementary teachers have experience with implementing engineering into the classroom. While engineering professional development opportunities for inservice teachers…

While increased attention has been put on approaches to teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), little has been reported on teachers' views, perceptions, and beliefs about teaching STEM. Such knowledge is needed to inform efforts to support innovative teaching of STEM subjects in classrooms. In this study, 154 in-service…

Although the currently employed STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) acronym is of recent origin, dating to the early 2000s (Chute, 2009), the United States has long emphasized the importance of teaching STEM in its public schools. Early efforts, such as "Science, the Endless Frontier" (Bush, 1945) and the…