Leading by Example for Engineering Design (LEED) to Meet Next Generation Science Standards in Middle and High School Science and Math Classes

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have been recently developed based on the National Academies Framework for K-12 Science Education. The NGSS will be adopted across many states and school districts in the next several years. A notable feature of the NGSS is the call for the integration of the engineering design process in K-12; stemming from the national need to train future engineers for sustained innovation and security. In this paper we discuss our experience in running a Workshop for lead science teachers from middle and high schools in which university engineering faculty worked with groups of teachers to development engineering design content in the form of design projects. In this pilot project sponsored by the Department of Education through the state Department of Education we operated four Saturday workshops, where 16 teachers worked with university faculty including the college science education coordinator and four faculty from various engineering disciplines. These workshops are training-oriented, and provide significant time for teachers and engineering faculty to work on projects. These projects will serve as cornerstone engineering design projects at their schools and serve as examples for other teachers. The completed projects will be disseminated at a LEED conference where all members of the _ Science Teachers Association and the _ Council of Teachers of Mathematics will be invited. This will broaden the impact of this grant statewide with the delivered cornerstone-example projects. The teachers were surveyed to determine their perception of their ability to teach engineering in the K-12 classroom after the workshops and prior to classroom implementation. The results of this survey are presented.