The Energizing Engineering Education (E³) Research Experience for Teachers program at the University of New Mexico provided 29 New Mexican teachers with 51 lab experiences over five years. Counting only the years immediately following the teachers’ summer lab experiences, the program directly impacted 6,836 students, 75.8% of whom come from populations traditionally underrepresented in STEM and 61.3% of whom were economically disadvantaged.

The actual number of students is much higher, because, as teachers noted in surveys, the E3 program had a lasting impact on the way they taught. Elementary, middle and high school teachers worked with faculty and graduate student mentors investigating solar cells, nuclear energy, light emitting diodes, batteries, and other energy-related topics in labs in the School of Engineering and Sandia National Laboratories. They attended energy and ethics-related seminars, went on field trips and participated in intensive workshops on project-based learning led by co-PI Vanessa Svihla.  

 To bring their experiences back to their students, teachers made videos of their lab mentors sharing stories about how they navigated challenges to become engineers. Teachers presented posters and Pecha Kucha presentations about their lab experiences. The teachers created 49 lessons and 62 activities to engage their students in engineering projects. Examples include designing and programming a hydroponic, LED-lit experimental greenhouse in their school, choosing the best configuration of solar panels for a community of tiny houses for Americorp Vista volunteers, and using real data to predict what happens to a high-altitude balloon during its flight and then checking predictions against actual on-board videos.  (https://sites.google.com/site/unmret2014/; https://www.teachengineering.org/curriculum/browse?q=1301373).

Three teachers won several awards, and several received a number of grants; all attribute these successes to the teaching strategies and information gained through the E³program.  A few credit project-based learning with increasing their students' test scores compared to other students in their schools.  All of the teachers were very glad to receive funds to buy badly needed supplies for their classrooms. Another benefit of the program was a richer relationship between UNM and the community. The School of Engineering Outreach Manager notified the RET teachers of professional development opportunities, campus tours, conducted outreach at the teachers’ schools, recruited UNM students to be science fair judges and recruited high school students for research internships and engineering camps.

 Evaluation of the E³program resulted in 4 publications: (1) Teachers completed a pre and post survey of their understanding of STEM practices. The teachers all learned about social norms and the realities of lab work and expressed concern over translating complex research experiences into classroom experiences. Those who participated for more than one summer increasingly agreed that their students should be responsible for coming up with their own questions and ways to investigate those questions (Livingston, Collins, Kooser, & Svihla, 2014). This finding suggests that teachers may benefit from repeated participation in RET programs, especially in a time when many teachers feel deprofessionalized. This is echoed in results from the E³evaluation, in which a teacher explained, "My RET program has given me the skills, resources, and opportunities that I so DESPERATELY needed to head BACK into my classroom ready to change the world, one student at a time! It is a refreshing change to be valued and treated with such respect. I am not the same teacher I was when I walked onto the campus of UNM to begin my RET program three years ago"   

 (2) We tested an approach to supporting teachers to design technology-enhanced learning experiences. We first engaged the teachers in an hour-long 3D printing conceptual design challenge. When contrasted with a group who had not had this experience, our RET teachers designed much richer, more generative tasks for their own students (Svihla, Gines, Yang, Collins, & Steinbrecher, 2015).

(3) Students who viewed what they were learning as important to their futures and who reported having opportunities to draw their own conclusions were significantly more likely to express interest in becoming an engineer. Most students could describe normative differences between science and engineering, but very few envisioned an active role for themselves (Svihla, 2016).

 (4) Based on a metasynthesis of recent K12 engineering education research, there has been an increase in the overall rigor of research methods used and an increase in the use of qualitative methods, which provide critical information about how specific interventions support learning. Although many papers argue for diversification, very few studies tackle issues of equity and inclusion, suggesting an opportunity for RET programs that work with diverse populations (Svihla, Marshall, Liu, & Winter, 2017).

Last Modified: 05/15/2018
Modified by: Charles B Fleddermann