2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Integrating science and engineering in middle school can enhance students’ problem-solving skills, creativity, engagement, and knowledge acquisition (NAE & NRC, 2014). Biomimicry engineering design challenges are effective in integrating science and engineering because they require students to use inspiration from biology to solve human problems. As part of the Biomimicry as an Authentic Anchor (BAA) project (Grant No.2300433), which is funded by the DRK12 program of the NSF Division of Research on Learning, we designed and facilitated professional development (PD) for middle school STEM teachers to support them in creating and implementing their own biomimicry-related curriculum. In this poster, we show our approach to PD design and iteration. The PD aimed to support teachers in understanding what biomimicry is, how to do structure-function analysis, how to get inspiration from natural organisms for biomimicry design challenges, and how to use different kinds of tools to support biomimicry design challenges. We also scaffolded teachers to design their own biomimicry curriculum and plan for implementation in their classrooms. For example, one scaffold was a matrix representation of possible combinations of technological tools (e.g., craft materials vs. CAD vs. robotics kits) and design challenge complexity (e.g., static structures vs. moving mechanisms vs. interactive devices). Another scaffold was a set of visual resources about how animals and plants achieve the functions of grasping, flinging, and digging. In addition to describing the main components of the PD, the poster will showcase results from our iterative PD design process over two years, based on observational and survey data, teacher interviews, and classroom implementation. In future work, we plan to disseminate the PD model and provide more opportunities for teachers to attend biomimicry-related training sessions.