2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

To achieve pre-college STEM education policy goals, preservice science teachers (PSTs) must understand engineering as a field with specialized disciplinary knowledge, practices, and career paths. PSTs are often unfamiliar with engineering, so related interventions are needed. Similarly, PSTs must be equipped to integrate authentic engineering activities that connect with real-world issues like sustainability. Storytelling about sustainable engineering offers a practical method of introducing PSTs to authentic engineering projects, practices, and careers. This work-in-progress, funded by ASEE’s Engineering for One Planet (EOP) initiative, illustrates the impact of engaging PSTs in reading and reflecting upon a set of “Sustainable Engineering Stories” during science teaching methods courses at two institutions.

During the summer of 2024, the researchers interviewed engineers from various disciplines about projects oriented toward sustainability. From those interviews, we created a set of eight Sustainable Engineering Stories for PSTs enrolled in their elementary science methods courses. During the fall 2024 and spring 2025 semesters, these stories were implemented as part of an intervention to develop PSTs’ knowledge of engineering as an environmentally and socially responsible human endeavor (i.e., aligned with the EOP framework). Before and after the intervention, PSTs were surveyed about their understanding of sustainable engineering and related self-efficacy for teaching about engineering and sustainability.

Throughout the science methods classes, PSTs read and reflected on six Sustainable Engineering Stories in groups and, later on, worked in those groups to develop, present, and individually reflect upon their own Engineering Stories. Data sources for the study were PSTs’ reading reflections and pre- and post-survey responses. Surveys comprised several open-ended and quantitative questions related to sustainable engineering and self-efficacy, and reading reflections consisted of three open-ended questions related to each Sustainable Engineering Story. The researchers analyzed data collaboratively using open coding and descriptive statistics, meeting regularly to collaborate and corroborate these analyses.

Results showed increased self-efficacy and a deepened understanding of sustainable engineering as an environmentally focused and socially responsible human endeavor that hinges upon communication and design under constraints. Implications are discussed for pre-college engineering teaching and learning (e.g., for teacher educators, preservice teachers, and researchers) and show how sustainable engineering may be practically integrated into the elementary science methods curriculum.