The importance of STEM education to societal developments provides justification for assuring K-12 teachers are prepared to teach the related content. Inservice teacher professional development is critical to achieving the goal of enhanced student knowledge of STEM. Combining the need for increased capacity to teach STEM and the extant literature…

Teaching is a complex activity that requires making ongoing multiple decisions and sporadic, responsive actions all while performing preplanned prescribed tasks. Evidence of certain aspects of teaching can be best assessed with a well-designed observation instrument. This instrument was designed to assess the enactment of the essential elements of…

This study sought to find student perceptions of how the engineering design process is learned and applied by pre-service teachers at the University of Georgia. The course description read "demonstration and hands-on learning, including problem solving, designing, construction and testing of prototypes, and activities that increase aesthetic,…

An outcome of a 1998 forum sponsored by the National Research Council was a recognition that topics related to food production and agriculture are excellent mechanisms for integrating science topics taught in the K-12 education system and for providing many avenues for inquiry based and project based learning. The engineering design process is…