Developing an Interdisciplinary Pathway for Engineering Education Master's Curriculum

Abstract

In this Work-in-Progress (WIP) paper, we share how we address the urgent need to prepare Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) teachers and faculty with 21 st -century teaching and learning knowledge and skills. Engineering education is now provided across all levels of learning and yet a major constraint is the number of teachers and informal educators prepared to teach engineering content. While engineering higher education faculty are likely in possession of strong discipline-specific knowledge, they often enter the workforce without formal pedagogical training. Faculty may be lacking guidance on how to develop best-practice approaches for pedagogical content knowledge or how to effectively teach students literacy within a discipline. Across our nation's educational landscape, engineering education graduate programs housed in engineering and education schools are striving to meet this ongoing demand for more and qualified engineering educators. At our university, we are looking to enter this market and develop a master's level program in engineering education focusing on providing discipline-specific, evidence-based pedagogy to students with engineering backgrounds and students with education backgrounds. This work, based on current gathered data and perspectives, raises fundamental questions about audience, purpose, and transformative approaches.