Enacting ambitious engineering curriculum in science classrooms: examining teachers' implementation of Virtual Engineering Internships

The United States' Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) elevate engineering design to the same stature as scientific inquiry, calling on science teachers to engage students in engineering practices to solve real-world problems. In response, researchers and curriculum developers designed and studied Virtual Engineering Internships (VEIs) to engage students in engineering and science practices outlined by the NGSS, and alleviate some of the logistical and conceptual burden for teachers unfamiliar with engineering instruction. Nevertheless, the VEIs still require striking shifts in the way teaching and learning happens in middle school science classrooms. In this exploratory study we sought to understand whether and how teachers participating in a curriculum pilot project (n = 26) interacted with the VEIs in ways that helped them carry out pedagogical shifts called for by the NGSS, and to identify curricular features that may have supported these shifts. Findings suggest that teachers leveraged and modified the VEIs to support student engagement in engineering practices and real-world problem-solving, which suggests the potential of the curriculum to catalyse deep pedagogical shifts called for by the NGSS. From this analysis, we propose a set of curriculum design features that can support teachers in implementing ambitious engineering curricula in diverse classroom contexts.