2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this session, we—book authors with over 70 years of combined experience in science and engineering education—share a new elementary science and engineering methods book that is under contract with Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. (The book will be available in the 2026-2027 academic year for teacher educators and preservice elementary teachers.) This book is unique when compared to others in six ways: (1) its integration of science and engineering education throughout; (2) its identification and use of two foundational commitments and four principles for student-centered science and engineering teaching and learning; (3) its use of vignettes to provide readers with examples of elementary science and engineering teaching, learning, and teacher professional learning; (4) its presentation of a range of student-centered instructional practices that are mindful of classroom constraints of time and other resources; (5) its balance of using evidence-based research while being accessible to a novice teacher audience through the emphasis on the practical work of teachers; and (6) its inclusion of resource-filled appendices connected to support teacher educators in their methods courses (including multimedia resources, suggestions for teaching practice, and annotated bibliographies for deeper learning from scholarly work). This methods text is unique in part because of our examination of the similarities and differences between science and engineering. The two disciplines are included together in all but two of the main chapters of the book. Those two chapters address the domains, communities, practices, habits of mind, and nature of the science and engineering disciplines, respectively. The engineering discipline chapter, as well as how we address engineering throughout the book, is built upon scholarly work and evidence-based practice from the P-12 engineering education community. At the Resource Exchange, we will share our foundational commitments and principles; provide a copy of the introductory chapter; and offer additional details about the authors and release date for the book.