"What Do I Bring to the Table?" Teacher Identity and Tensions Teaching Unfamiliar Engineering Content

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Science Instructors' Technology Use

Abstract

Using a Communities of Practice framework, this two-year case study seeks to better understand how veteran elementary educators navigated teaching unfamiliar content in an afterschool engineering club by connecting with and developing their teacher identities. Data include multiple semi-structured interviews reflective of teachers’ experiences in engineering club over time. All three teachers used core aspects of their teacher identities to mediate the new, evolving space of engineering club and its unfamiliar content. The teachers’ reflective narratives evidenced identity work taken up during club including brokering, improvisations, and transformed teacher practice. In supporting elementary teachers increasingly expected to teach unfamiliar content like engineering, we must consider how existing identities, knowledges, and practices can mediate such experiences to teachers’ benefit and empowerment.

Authors

• Katarina Nicole Silvestri, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Christopher Jarmark, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Mary B. McVee, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Lynn Shanahan, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Marissa Pytlak, University at Buffalo - SUNY