2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 297: Impact of Community-based Engineering Lessons on Rural and Indigenous Elementary Students

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

This paper reports on the fourth year of a five-year NSF RFE program focused on supporting rural and reservation teachers to implement classroom engineering activities that are aligned to their local community contexts. The research team has spent the last four years working with a small group of 3rd through 5th grade teachers (n=5) to (1) help them learn about local opportunities around which to develop grade appropriate engineering tasks, and (2) develop and implement those task to the students in their classroom. This paper focuses on how the implementation of community-based engineering lessons impacted students' perceptions and attitudes toward engineering , as well as elementary teachers’ perspectives about their teaching and their students’ learning of community-based engineering in their classrooms.

Authors

Dr. Rebekah J Hammack http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8621-1006 Purdue University, West Lafayette [biography]

Rebekah Hammack is an Assistant Professor of Science Education at Purdue University. Prior to joining the faculty at Purdue, she was an assistant professor at Montana State University and is a former Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow in the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings at the National Science Foundation
Dr. Tugba Boz Indiana-Purdue University [biography]

Tugba Boz is a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University. In her research, she navigates the complexity of introducing innovative, sustainable STEM practices within varied, particularly rural and Indigenous, educational contexts. Her research interest spans elementary computer science and engineering education, integrated STEM education, and sustainability of teacher PL outcomes.
Dr. Nicholas Lux Lux http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7434-0660 Montana State University [biography]

Dr. Nicholas Lux has is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in MSUâ€™s Department of Education. His teaching and research interests are in the area of educational technology.Â He has worked in the fields of K-12 and higher education for
Paul Gannon http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-0888-8158 Montana State University [biography]

Paul Gannon is a Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Associate Director of the Montana Engineering Education Research Center at Montana State University in Bozeman.

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