Exploring sources of engineering teaching self-efficacy for pre-service elementary teachers

Ezgi Yesilyurt,Erdogan Kaya,Hasan Deniz

doi:10.1186/s40594-021-00299-8

Abstract

BackgroundThe Next Generation Science Standards (2013) put a special emphasis on engineering for K-12 science education. However, a significant number of elementary teachers still feel unprepared to integrate engineering into their science programs. It is, therefore, incumbent upon science educators to update their elementary science methods courses to accommodate engineering especially in the states which adopted the NGSS. In this study, we taught an engineering unit in an elementary science teaching methods course to examine what instructional components and learning experiences provided in the engineering unit enhance teachers’ engineering teaching self-efficacy beliefs.Our research questions addressed to what extent the engineering education intervention improved pre-service teachers’ engineering teaching efficacy beliefs and what instructional components and learning experiences served as sources of self-efficacy contributing to the improvement of pre-service elementary teachers’ engineering teaching efficacy beliefs. We also explored how pre-service teachers viewed the relative importance of the sources of teaching efficacy stemming from the engineering unit.ResultsThe participants comprised 84 pre-service teachers enrolled in an elementary education program at a public university in the Southwestern United States. Data obtained from the Engineering Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument (ETEBI) indicated that the pre-service teachers’ personal teaching efficacy beliefs significantly improved after the engineering intervention; however, the engineering intervention had a small impact on teachers’ engineering teaching outcome expectancy beliefs. Written reflections used to explore the sources of engineering teaching efficacy and the relative importance of each source showed that cognitive content mastery and cognitive pedagogical mastery were the major sources of engineering teaching self-efficacy among the pre-service elementary teachers.ConclusionOur study illustrated that integrating engineering design activities with explicit-reflective instruction on the nature of engineering concepts could enhance pre-service teachers’ personal engineering teaching efficacy beliefs even though a relatively small impact was observed in their engineering teaching outcome expectancy beliefs. Also, the study indicated cognitive content mastery and cognitive pedagogical mastery were the most important sources of engineering teaching efficacy. Therefore, the study suggests that it is vital to integrate a variety of mastery and vicarious experiences in methods courses to support the development of teachers’ engineering teaching efficacy beliefs. Besides, the current study could provide an example for integrating engineering education in methods courses.

Highlights

Since the Generation Science Standards [Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)], (2013) integrated engineering into the K-12 science curriculum, there has been a growing need for developing programs to equip K-12 teachers with the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge for engineering education
Since the advent of the NGSS, there has been an increasing push to prepare Pre-service teachers (PST) for engineering teaching starting from the elementary school level to meet the demands of the standards; there is a paucity of research on the sources of PSTs’ engineering teaching efficacy beliefs
We aimed to investigate the sources of engineering teaching self-efficacy for PSTs and examine whether the engineering education intervention providing various sources of teaching efficacy information had a significant impact on their engineering teaching efficacy beliefs

Summary

Introduction

Since the Generation Science Standards [NGSS], (2013) integrated engineering into the K-12 science curriculum, there has been a growing need for developing programs to equip K-12 teachers with the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge for engineering education. A significant number of elementary teachers feel unprepared and uncomfortable in integrating engineering into their classroom teaching (Carr et al 2012; Hammack and Ivey 2017; Trygstad et al 2013) This is not surprising considering the previous studies reporting that teachers do not receive sufficient and formal training on engineering teaching throughout their education (Banilower et al 2018; Lederman and Lederman 2014). Previous studies have indicated that science methods courses could improve teachers’ teaching selfefficacy beliefs (e.g., Bursal 2012; Kaya et al 2019; Kazempour and Sadler 2015; Palmer 2006; Velthuis et al 2014) It is, necessary to integrate the concepts and practices of engineering into methods courses to support PSTs with this challenging task. We explored how pre-service teachers viewed the relative importance of the sources of teaching efficacy stemming from the engineering unit

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Conclusion