Abstract
<p>Using engineering design to teach science requires teachers to engage in noticing, interpreting, and responding to students’ needs in real-time. While research has begun to focus on how elementary teachers do so, less is known about how teachers instructionally support and optimize students’ ideas through engineering design feedback. In this study we investigate what instructional moves two elementary teachers’ employ to leverage students’ ideas and reasoning and create opportunities for students to exchange design feedback. Data were gathered using classroom observations of teachers’ implementations of a design task focused on sound and energy transformation. Observations were coded for teachers’ use of high-leverage practices, and event maps were created to chronicle teachers’ implementation of the task from start to finish. Event maps were analyzed and compared for discrete instructional activities and modes of classroom organization that supported opportunities for feedback. Findings suggested that while teachers used similar instructional moves, how and when they created opportunities for student design feedback differed, resulting in diverse ways of assessing and supporting students’ understandings. Implications suggest design feedback as both a purposeful and naturally present phenomenon throughout the design process, reflective of the nature of engineering design.</p>
Highlights
As the integration of elementary STEM instruction continues growing internationally, so does the call for educators to utilize more equitable and responsive science teaching methods (Lee et al, 2014)
While research has begun to focus on how elementary teachers do so, less is known about how teachers instructionally support and optimize students’ ideas through engineering design feedback
These practices center on noticing, interpreting, and responding to students’ ideas in real-time (Watkins et al, 2018; Wendell et al, 2017), skills that are especially important as students work collaboratively toward providing design solutions to open-ended and real-world STEM problems (Capobianco et al, 2018; Cunningham et al, 2018)
Summary
As the integration of elementary STEM instruction continues growing internationally, so does the call for educators to utilize more equitable and responsive science teaching methods (Lee et al, 2014). These practices center on noticing, interpreting, and responding to students’ ideas in real-time (Watkins et al, 2018; Wendell et al, 2017), skills that are especially important as students work collaboratively toward providing design solutions to open-ended and real-world STEM problems (Capobianco et al, 2018; Cunningham et al, 2018) To meet this challenge, teachers need to provide space and time for students to grapple with their formative STEM understandings as they engage in engineering design (Wendell et al, 2016; Wendell et al, 2019), in ways that benefit both students and teachers (Guzey & Aranda, 2017; Haverly et al, 2018; McFadden & Roehrig, 2019). This study aims to investigate elementary teachers’ instructional strategies across classrooms for affording students opportunities to reflect upon and assess their engagement in planning, testing, and evaluating their formative design solutions as they engage in an elementary engineering design task focused on sound
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