Preparation of Teachers for a Rapidly Changing Technological World: Engineering in Teacher Education

If we are to find effective ways to reverse the trends that point to growing technological illiteracy of the population, teacher preparation and engineer preparation communities need to cooperate. Without effective contributions of the teacher preparation community, engineering schools will face dwindling populations of applicants and will spend their resources on remedial work rather than focusing on technology and innovation. Without effective contributions of the engineer preparation community, critical feedback will be missing on what is needed at the pre-university stages of technological education. Either way, the quantity and quality of engineers in many currently technologically-leading societies will gradually diminish and lose their ability to influence major decisions on the future of technology and society (Baker et al., 2005). Recognizing the need for collaboration among teacher preparation and engineer preparation communities, the IEEE Educational Activities Board responded by convening a series of Deans' Summits in the U.S. focused on forming campus collaborations that would result in: enhanced teacher preparation, improved curricula and teaching methodology, and expanded outreach for both education and engineering programs. As a result of participation in these summits, the engineer educators and teacher educators at Tennessee Tech University have collaborated to create and co-teach (1) a course required for all preservice elementary (K-8) teachers (200 per academic year) focused on "problem solving for technological literacy," and (2) a two-week summer institute for inservice secondary school (Grades 7-12) teachers focused on embedding engineering in the teaching of science and mathematics. The goals for the preservice course are to help future teachers (a) become technologically literate through in-depth investigations of the world around them, (b) deepen and broaden their understanding of natural phenomena in the world and how to think critically about such, (c) learn to develop and apply problem-solving strategies to real-world phenomena, and (d) equip themselves with strategies for responding to and enhancing students' natural curiosity about the world they live in and how things work. Course activities evolve from questions about the world that arise naturally in students' minds, for example, how things work. Investigations are then designed, tested, modified, and reported. Often, students' myths about how things work are resolved as a result of the design-explore process. More importantly, the students learn how to foster design and exploration in their classrooms as future teachers. The annual two-week summer institute for in-service secondary teachers (65 attendees each summer) focuses on bringing the engineering processes of design, creativity, and experimentation into the classroom. Instrumentation and technology used in engineering is provided to teachers for use in their teaching of science and mathematics. This paper will showcase (1) the design and management of these initiatives focusing on the collaboration among teacher and engineer educators, (2) projects and investigations used with the participants, (3) assessment and impact of these initiatives, and (4) suggestions for fostering these initiatives elsewhere.