• Discoverability Visible
  • Join Policy Open/Anyone
  • Created 09 Mar 2011

Goals and Activities


Goals

  1. Create a partnership of university engineers and scientists, teacher educators, school teachers, school administrators, and community partners to improve science education in grades 3-6 through the integration of engineering design in science teaching and learning.
  2. Enhance the quality, quantity, and diversity of in-service and pre-service teachers prepared to utilize engineering design as a means to teach science through authentic, inquiry-based, multi-disciplinary, design projects.
  3. Adapt, refine, and test existing project- and design-based curricular materials/tasks, and where necessary develop new ones, to support the teaching of elementary science through authentic, inquiry-based, multi-disciplinary, design projects.
  4. Generate evidence-based outcomes that con-tribute to our understanding of how teachers teach science through the engineering design process and how young students effectively learn science concepts through design-based activities.

Implementation Activities

In-service teacher professional development and support

  • Summer Institute and follow-up professional development
  • Work with disciplinary faculty
  • SLEDhub online community and resource repository (sledhub.org)

Pre-service teacher preparation

  • Special elementary science methods course focused on design
  • Pre-service teachers linked with SLED participating schools and teachers
  • Pre-service teachers assist with Summer Institute

Adaptation and/or development of engineering design activities for grades 3-6 by teams of faculty with disciplinary expertise in engineering and science.

Research and dissemination

  • Research addresses three key aspects of the project: the partnership, teacher implementation, and student learning.
  • Dissemination includes presentations at professional meetings, writings about the project, media exposure, and use of the SLEDhub online community and resource repository.

2011 SLED Summer Institute