"Shoes of Students . . . Shoes of Teachers": Experiencing and Understanding Productive Struggle

• In Event: Learner Engagement, Assessment, and Experiences That Affect Teacher Practices in the Classroom

Abstract

We engaged teachers in productive struggle as learners so they could understand what it means to struggle productively and build on those understandings to support their students’ productive struggle. We have, over the last three years, developed a set of practices that helped move teachers away from trepidation with engineering design, hidden gaps in content knowledge, and negative views toward professional development and toward comfort with ambiguity, confronting and reducing content knowledge gaps, and engaging a professional support network. Discussion of our practices, including sustained engagement, teachers experiencing engineering design as learners, and scaffolding through challenging content, has great potential to improve professional development and thereby positively impact student learning in STEM.

Authors

• Johnna Bolyard, West Virginia University

• Reagan Curtis, West Virginia University

• Darran Cairns, West Virginia University

• Angela Walker, West Virginia Regional Education Service Agency 3