The Framework for K-12 Science Education details new goals to guide improvement of US science education.Among the new goals, the inclusion of engineering core ideas and practices stand out. We report a case study of | 89 research questions and detail our methods for collecting and analyzing data. Fourth, we present the results of our case study. Fifth, we discuss the findings in relationship to the prior work on science teachers' goals and instructional practices more broadly. Finally, we present implications arising from this study for educative experiences for teachers and for future research.
| THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKOur theoretical framework draws on a large body of work suggesting goals are "the central motivator of actions"
The goal of this study was to examine how the use of a new instructional model is related to changes in middle school students' engineering identity. The intent of this instructional model, which is called argument-driven engineering (ADE), is to give students opportunities to design and critique solutions to meaningful problems using the core ideas and practices of science and engineering. The model also reflects current recommendations found in the literature for supporting the development or maintenance of engineering identity. This study took place in the context of an eighth-grade science classroom in order to explore how middle school students' engineering identities change over time as they become more familiar with engineering core ideas and practices. One hundred students participated in this study. These students completed three design tasks during the school year that were created using the ADE instructional model. These students also completed a survey that was designed to measure two important aspects of an engineering identity (recognition and interest) at three different time points. The results of a hierarchical linear modeling analysis suggest that students' ideas about how they view themselves and others view them in terms of engineering did not change over time and their reported interest decreased from one survey to the next. The difficulty of the design tasks and the ways teachers enacted the instructional model are proposed as potential explanations for this counterintuitive finding.
Christina is a doctoral student in the STEM Education program at the University of Texas at Austin. After earning a B.S.Ed. in Secondary Education-Biology through the NAUTeach program at Northern Arizona University, she taught in several capacities in K-12 schools. Christina then began teaching community college students part-time. Through this position, she was encouraged to earn her Master of Arts in Science Teaching, also at Northern Arizona University. During this time, Christina discovered a love for research, prompting her to pursue a Ph.D. She is a recipient of both a Graduate School Recruitment Fellowship and a Texas New Scholar's Fellowship. She is a member of the National Science Teachers Association, and currently serves as the STEM Education representative to the Graduate Student Assembly at UT.
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