Engaging K-12 Teachers in Engineering Through a Professional Development Program: Implementation Strategies, Results and Lessons Learned

In order for the United States to remain the global leader in engineering and technology, it must produce and retain a higher number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent. Over the past few decades, there have been a number of national initiatives that have promoted STEM education with the goal of generating student interest in science and engineering and increasing the number of students entering the STEM pipeline. Research literature confirms that teachers are the single most important factor affecting student achievement and interest in STEM subjects. Several models of teacher professional development have been reported along with the evidence of the degree of their effectiveness in promoting student interest in engineering. These professional development programs are designed to increase the engineering content knowledge of math and science teachers, thereby having a direct impact on student achievement in math and science and helping to promote a positive attitude to engineering. This paper presents the design of a teacher professional development program offered in a predominantly Hispanic region in South Texas. The professional development program provides an opportunity for teachers to participate in engineering projects, become more knowledgeable about the engineering profession, and learn new pedagogical tools that they use to develop engineering-based hands-on learning activities for their classrooms. One of the effective approaches adopted by this program is the development of creative engineering connections between the math and science concepts taught by the teacher participants and real-world engineering applications that not only can K-12 students easily understand, but also find tangible and interesting. The paper also provides evidence of the effectiveness of the program strategies that have resulted in about 89% of the developed learning activities being successfully implemented in the teachers' classrooms. The results of the program teacher surveys and discussion of lessons learned by the program management are also presented.