Engineering Design in Middle and Secondary Math & Science Education

University Of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia MO

Investigators

Abstract

PROPOSAL NO.: 0230593 PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Nair, Satish INSTITUTION NAME: University of Missouri-Columbia TITLE: Engineering Design in Middle and Secondary Math & Science Education Abstract There is increasing consensus for the need to incorporate technological literacy into the curriculum of future teachers. Innovative collaborations are necessary to affect such a change. The Colleges of Engineering and Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) will lead a meaningful partnership with the Columbia school district, one rural school, an inner city school in Kansas City, a community college, engineering businesses, and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, to develop a strategy to increase the engineering content, with particular focus on design content, in the curriculum of future mathematics and science teachers in the 7-12 th grades, using hands-on engineering exemplars. The project will also test the hypothesis that engineering design is an ideal domain for reaching under served groups because it utilizes hands-on activities that students find motivating, and it also shows the connection to jobs. The proposed project will help to develop infrastructure for deeper and sustained partnerships, centered on engineering design, among middle and secondary level mathematics and science educators, higher education, industry, and the department of elementary and secondary education of the state. The prototype resources developed in the planning grant stage and subsequent larger effort, will be made available to middle and secondary mathematics and science teachers throughout the region, the state, and the nation, with the expectation that they will utilize them whenever appropriate. These changes will, in the long term, lead to improved academic performance in mathematics and science, with meaningful engineering design experience, and to an increase in the number of pre-college students who enroll in engineering degree programs.