This award provides funding for a 3 year continuing award to support a Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering Site program at the University of Cincinnati (UC) entitled, Sustainable Engineering for Urban Needs: Research Experiences for Middle and High School Teachers", under the direction of Dr. Anant Kukreti.
This Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering Site is a renewal of a successful RET Site program hosted by the UC College of Engineering which annually supports, 12 in-service and 6 pre-service middle and high school math and science teachers from Cincinnati public schools, who will participate in a six-week summer research program and academic year follow-on activities. The primary goals of this RET site are three fold: (1) To educate, cultivate, and enrich experiences for science and math teachers by exploring the scientific methods of inquiry and the critical research skills used by engineers to solve open-ended real-world problems. (2) The participating teachers will become role models by applying their research experiences in their classrooms with colleagues. (3) The teachers' new skills will enable their students to directly link their education to current events and the needs of their community and encourage them to become effective citizens in a technology-driven society.
We obtained two RET Sites, implemented from 2006 to 2014, and two no cost extension years to nurture and encourage STEM education. The RET projects implemented worked to meet the growing need for engineering educated middle and high school teachers who are equipped to provide learners with opportunities to achieve recently revised Ohio State Science Standards and Common Core Mathematics Standards juxtaposed with Universal Skills (21st Century Learning Skills). Preparation of such teachers allowed them to: Integrate the research project experiences into the math and science courses they teach. Improve 7-12 student science and math achievement to prepare for and increase interest in college study in engineering or other STEM careers as a result of better instruction and curriculum delivered by well qualified teachers with explicit training in engineering research. Disseminate and provide professional development to their colleagues through a school-, district- or regional-level "Teacher Leaders" program for dissemination of the new curricular materials they created and training other teachers to use challenge-based learning and engineering design process pedagogy to deliver mathematics and science content. Ninety-five (31 men and 64 women; 75 white Caucasians and 20 ethnic minorities; and 5 Ph.D., 70 Masters and 20 Bachelor degree holders) middle and high school math and science teachers were trained, bringing their experiences and knowledge into 56 schools (4 elementary, 11 middle and 41 high schools) in the Greater Cincinnati area, which included 27 School Districts and 11 Private Schools. These teachers have developed 61 science and 29 mathematics curricular units. Over 2,400 students have been impacted through the lessons taught by the RET participants. In the RET Sites the teachers participated in a 6-week summer engineering research emersion under the guidance of engineering faculty members and graduate students and participated in a structured professional development educational program including: 1) authentic learning pedagogy and assessment enrichment seminars; 2) research and curricular material dissemination skill building workshops; 3) experiential learning field trips; and 4) year-long coaching support as they executed classroom implementations. Teachers produced five deliverables: 1) a Team Project Report, including the research report and individual teacher classroom implementation plans; 2) a Team PowerPoint Presentation showcasing both research completed and classroom implementation plan; 3) an Individual Teacher Poster illustrating the research highlights and the teacher’s lesson to students; 4) a Team Video (~ 3-minute) showcasing the teachers’ summer work (for a K-12 audience;) and 5) a Team Journal Paper (draft), co-authored by RET participants and select project team members. The two no-cost extensions only included a school year RET Program, in which two different programs were executed. In the first no cost extension year, 5 highly qualified participants from previous programs--"Teacher Leaders"-- trained 5 senior undergraduate engineering students, who working in pairs, created and taught a STEM lesson designed to reinforce STEM concepts using engineering design process in real world situations and make career connections associated with engineering, and the societal impact of engineering. In the second no cost extension year, 3 Teacher Leaders coached 6 high school math and science teachers (Teacher Leader/2 teachers) in developing, teaching, assessing documenting and disseminating instructional units using challenge-based learning (CBL) and engineering design process (EDP) pedagogies. In summary, the RET teachers learned practical research applications, technical writing, lesson planning, and presentation skills and appreciated the time spent with both graduate research assistant and faculty mentor. They demonstrated an increased understanding of "engineering design and research" skills and their own confidence in using them. Many of the teachers have become "Teacher Leaders" who have successively demonstrated the skills to transfer the experience and knowledge gained to train other teachers. Through instruction by RET teachers, overall, students were interested in engineering; 90% of them said they learned from the RET teachers’ lessons, and increased their confidence in learning science and mathematics. Students also reported that they learned from the RET lesson and the teacher (means of 3.82 & 3.92 out of 5). Positive teacher ratings included the teacher being "able to explain the subject very easily", "very good at answering our questions," and "encouraged the lesson being well organized" (means of 4.22, 4.18, & 4.04 out of 5, respectively). Students also reported that the "lesson was different from other lessons I’ve had in this class" (mean of 3.85 out of 5). The additional open-ended student responses support these numbers. In summary, students reported that activities were fun and they learned about research and the research process. Student feedback supports that the RET teacher lessons were an effect way for learning science and math and building confidence in these disciplines.
