Middle School Students Made Substantially Greater Gains in the Nature of Engineering (NOE) Knowledge Domain After Teacher Shifts in Practice and NOE

• In Event: 49.048 - Integrating Engineering Experiences in Science Education

Abstract

Middle school students exhibited a disparity in their complexity of NOE, ranging from novice to expert in their conceptual understanding and connectedness of ideas as demonstrated by Knowledge Domain Graphs created by Epistemic Network Analysis. This study presents two years of data related to students’ NOE and the NOE of the teacher, and provides evidence for purposeful shifts in teaching and in teacher NOE which correlate to increased post-test scores for students in year 2. This is one of the first studies that demonstrate increases in student achievement in NOE that is related to changes in teaching style and teacher NOE. Findings were generated from the use of General Linear Modeling (GLM), Epistemic Network Analysis and multiple qualitative analyses.

Authors

• Anita Martin, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College

• Elisa Mustari, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Fouad S. Abd-El-Khalick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Maya Israel, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign