From Knowing-About To Knowing-To: Development Of Engineering Pedagogical Content Knowledge By Elementary Teachers Through Perceived Learning And Implementing Difficulties

The present study sought to reveal how elementary teachers develop their engineering pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) after leaving professional development programs to practice engineering teaching in real classroom settings. Participants of this study were the elementary teachers who received one-week training of engineering education provided by EfF (a P-12 Engineering teaching and learning institute in a Midwestern university). Data of this study were collected from these elementary teachers through face-to-face interviews and an online open-ended survey. Based on a phenomenological research method and a constructivist ELC (engineering instruction, learners, and contexts) framework developed by the researchers to investigate engineering PCK development, this study explored the elementary teachers’ lived engineering teaching experiences following the procedures of inductive qualitative data analysis. Findings yielded in this study revealed that the elementary teachers developed their knowledge about engineering teaching and learning situations through their engineering teaching practice. But such knowledge was the knowledge of knowing-about and it did not automatically transfer into the elementary teachers’ engineering PCK or knowing-to knowledge allowing them to act effectively and responsively to engineering teaching and learning situations at hand. In their engineering teaching practice, the elementary teachers engaged themselves in a dynamic and evolving trial-failure-success process. It was in this process that the elementary teachers made sense of new engineering teaching and learning situations and transformed their knowing-about into engineering PCK responsive to these situations.

Motivations and Benefits for College Students Serving as Mentors in a High School Robotics Competition

Many universities provide space for student organizations in which undergraduate students are learning leadership skills, mentor other students and bring their engineering skills to practice.Purdue FIRST Programs (PFP) is a service-learning program where university students mentor predominantly high school student teams participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). Whereas most FRC teams are mentored by professional engineers, PFP is unique in both the extent which it relies on student mentors and the overall scope of the organization. Existing models of mentorship do not adequately describe the specific relationship between the college and high schools students: (1) Due to the proximity in both age and experience, the college students cannot be considered more experienced (traditional model of mentorship) and (2) Dueto the fact that both student populations are in different educational systems, the college students cannot be considered peer mentors. To help understand this alternative mentoring relationship,this study was conducted to investigate the mentorship experience of the college students, their perceptions of the challenges, their motivations for participating in the program and their perceived benefits. A survey of all participants (n=37 returned) and semi-structured interviews with a purposefully selected sample (n=10) build the basis for this multiple case study. The interview data were transcribed and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Results indicate that college students\u27 primary motivations for mentoring included wanting to continue working with FIRST after high school, wanting to contribute to the community in appreciation of their positive experiences with FIRST in high school, and enjoying doing the technical work associated with robotics competitions. The primary benefits described by the college students were the development of their leadership ability, learning how to work on a team, improving their ability to communicate, and other process skills. The college students also believed that there were significant benefits for the high school students from being mentored by college students, including developing close relationships because of the minimal age difference, helping the high school students to learn about college life and be more motivated to pursue higher education, and greater collaboration and student input compared to teams mentored by experienced engineers coming from industry. While the students were able to give examples of applying their technical knowledge and skills as mentors, they did not perceive significant learning in this area. The main challenges that the mentors faced included conflict resolution on the team, and making sure that mentors understood their role and did not take over and do work on the robot that should be done by the high school students. Despite these challenges, the participants appreciated being able to stay connected to the FIRST Robotics Competition after high school, the ability to develop communication and leadership skills, the close relationships that they developed with the high school students, and the opportunity to contribute positively to both the local and FIRST Robotics communities. Implications and further research needs will be discussed in the paper

How Important Are Uncertainty Shocks in the Housing Market?

This dissertation analyzes the impact of shocks to uncertainty on the macroeconomy and on the housing sector. To this end, I examine different approaches to measuring and modeling uncertainty. My work contributes to this growing literature as follows. Chapter two clarifies one possible source of confusion in the calibration of models using uncertainty shocks, that between ex-ante vs. ex-post uncertainty measures. Chapter three proposes a different approach to modeling uncertainty shocks, that corresponds to the empirical evidence of Jurado, Ludvigson and Ng (2015) and Ludvigson, Ma, and Ng (2016). Chapter four investigates how the factors of production uncertainty, financial intermediation, and credit constrained households can affect housing prices and aggregate economic activity. Diese Dissertation analysiert die Auswirkung von Unsicherheitsschocks auf die Makroökonomie und auf den Häusermarkt. Hierfür analysiere ich unterschiedliche Ansätze zur Messung und Modellierung von Unsicherheit. Meine Arbeit trägt zu dieser wachsenden Literatur wie folgt bei. Kapitel zwei erörtert eine potentielle Quelle von Unklarheit bei der Kalibrierung von Unsicherheitsschocks - die zwischen ex-ante und ex-post Unsicherheitsmessungen. Kapitel drei schlägt einen neuen Ansatz zur Moderllierung von Unsicherheit vor, korrespondierend mit der empirischen Evidenz von Jurado, Ludvigson, und Ng (2015) sowie Ludvigson, Ma, and Ng (2016). Kapitel vier untersucht, inwiefern die Faktoren der Produktionsunsicherheit, Finanzintermediation und Kredit-zugangsbeschränkten Haushalten die Häuserpreise sowie die aggregierte wirtschaftliche Aktivität beeinflussen

Extending Teacher Professional Development through an Online Learning Community: A Case Study

The Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning (INSPIRE) at Purdue University in the U.S. was established in 2006 to integrate engineering and engineering thinking into the Pre-Kindergarten-12th grade education. The institute provides elementary teachers with pioneering professional development in engineering education through a week-long face-to-face Summer Academy and an online professional development program. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of the P-6 engineering education teacher professional development, and meanwhile, present a set of design principles to extend teacher professional development through an online learning community

First-Year Effects Of An Engineering Professional Development Program On Elementary Teachers

The ultimate objective of teacher professional development (TPD) is to deliver a positive impact on students’ engagement and performance in class through teacher practice via improving their content and pedagogical content knowledge and changing their attitudes toward the subject being taught. However, compared to other content areas, such as mathematics and science, relatively few engineering TPD programs have been developed, and there has been a lack of research on the effective practice of TPD for K-12 engineering education. As a part of a five-year longitudinal project, this study reports the first-year effect of TPD offered by the Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning (INSPIRE) at Purdue University on elementary teachers integrating engineering. Thirty-two teachers of second through fourth grade from seven schools attended a one-week intensive Summer Academy and integrated engineering lessons throughout the year. Based on a pre- and post-test research design, multiple measures were utilized to examine changes in teachers’ knowledge and perceptions of engineering and their variations in knowledge and perceptions by school and teacher characteristics. Overall, teachers were satisfied with the engineering TPD program, significantly increased their engineering design process knowledge, and became more familiar with engineering. While teachers’ knowledge about engineering did not vary by school and teacher characteristics, some aspects of teachers’ perceptions regarding engineering integration and their practice differed by school and teacher characteristics.

Engineers’ perceptions of the importance of empathy and care: initial insights from engineers practicing in Australia

Empathy and care influence aspects of engineering practice including collaboration and teamwork, stakeholder engagement, and quality of work. Empathy has been identified as a key employability skill for professionals, and is the foundation for many skills and attributes anticipated as required by future engineers. Therefore, the understanding of empathy and care, and consideration of the development of empathetic and caring competencies are increasingly relevant for engineering education. Recent studies have explored the conceptualisation of and value placed on empathy and care in engineering practice, from the perspectives of practicing engineers in US and German contexts. We broaden this to include the Australian setting. Engineers’ perceptions of empathy and care within Australian engineering practice were collected using an online version of the Empathy and Care Questionnaire (ECQ) instrument developed by Hess, Strobel, Pan and Wachter Morris (N = 183). Statistical analysis of survey questions relating to the perceived importance and benefits of empathy and care to engineers, and relevance within a range of engineering practice situations was undertaken. Analysis of gender, years of experience, and organisational role indicated that female engineers perceived empathy and care to be more important, and more impactful on engineering practice than male engineers. Perceptions of empathy and care did not vary with duration of engineering work experience, however engineers in positions of organisational leadership placed greater importance on empathy and care in their roles than others. These differences contrast with results of the US and German studies. Further analysis is required to understand where, when and why these differences occur

Trends in Texas High School Student Enrollment in Mathematics, Science, and CTE-STEM Courses

Background: In the context of Texas of the USA, House Bill 5 signifies a major policy shift requiring entering high school students starting in fall 2014 to choose an endorsement, like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) being one of them, to provide students with earlier exposure to a coherent course sequence. As we barely understand students’ choices before the endorsement requirement, this study explored 6 years of data (2008–2013) on high school student enrollment rates in mathematics, science, and career and technical education (CTE)-STEM courses to set out the baseline of the trends in STEM course enrollment in Texas. Results: The enrollment rates of the STEM-related courses had wide variations by types of courses, gender, and race/ ethnicity. Overall, student enrollment rates increased across time in selective and advanced mathematics, science, and CTE-STEM courses, which indicates a promising prospect for the STEM pipeline. However, there were exceptions in several courses with gender and racial/ethnic differences in the trends. Gender disparity was greater in advanced science courses than advanced mathematics courses, and collectively, gender gap in CTE-STEM courses increased greater than advanced mathematics and advanced science courses across years. While racial/ethnic differences were constant across years in both advanced mathematics and advanced science courses, the differences were rising in CTE-STEM courses in recent years. Conclusions: As little is known about students’ preferences in course-taking in STEM courses at the state level, the findings on the trends in students’ STEM course-taking, disaggregated by gender and race/ethnicity, can provide needed insights on what institutional K-12 changes would be effective for impacting the STEM pipeline.Texas A&M University Open Access to Knowledge Fund (OAKFund

Organ-izing the Curriculum: Enhancing Knowledge, Attitudes and Interests in Engineering with Biomedical Course Modules

Proposed abstract for the NSF-Grantees Poster Session Organ-izing the Curriculum: enhancing knowledge, attitudes and interests in engineering with biomedical course modules The relatively new discipline of biomedical engineering emerged from informal collaborations between engineers, physicians and life scientists, and is the fastest growing engineering discipline at most universities. Chemical, mechanical, and electrical engineers play an important and expanding role in this burgeoning field because the fundamental core principles of each discipline are critical to biomedical mainstays such as the design of artificial organs. This project introduces hands-on, biomedically-related experiments and course materials into the engineering curriculum, with the aim of increasing core disciplinary knowledge and increasing interest in engineering. This paper describes the biomedical modules that have been developed and integrated into a variety of courses throughout XXXX’s engineering curriculum. Results demonstrate an increase in student’s understanding of engineering concepts in comparison to control groups. At the freshman level, the treatment group that participated in biomedical education showed significantly higher gains in their perception of classroom climate, interest and confidence in biomedical engineering, confidence in engineering, confidence in writing,and perception of engineers’ contribution to society

Comment on Risk Shocks by Christiano, Motto, and Rostagno (2014)

In a recent paper, Christiano, Motto and Rostagno (2014, henceforth CMR) report that risk shocks are the most important source of business cycle fluctuations. This result is in contrast to much of the existing literature; e.g. Bachmann and Bayer (2013) report that risk shocks account for 4% of the volatility in GDP. We resolve this apparent contradiction by first highlighting that CMR depart from the normal definition of a risk shock by including an additional \news" component. We then incorporate their definition of risk shocks into a canonical financial accelerator model that does not include the array of rigidities (both nominal and real) that are in the model economy employed by CMR. In the base model, risk shocks as normally defined play a quantitatively minor role in business cycle activity; however, when the CMR definition is employed, we replicate their result that risk shocks are the most important impulse mechanism of business cycles. It is clear from this analysis that the endogenous amplification and propagation mechanisms in the CMR model do not account for the significant role that risk shocks play in fluctuations; rather, it is the exogenous definition of risk shocks that is doing virtually all of the work. We conclude that the CMR finding should be viewed with caution