2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Middle School Preservice Teachers’ Talk Moves to Help a Team Consider how to Improve (Fundamental)

Presented at Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE) Technical Session 13: Educator Professional Learning and Growth in Pre-College Engineering Education

Engaging in productive diagnostic troubleshooting is critical to the engineering design process and a key aspect of informed designers’ work. However, it can be challenging for beginning designers like elementary students to engage in productive diagnostic troubleshooting. Support from teachers can help students move from prototype testing towards informed improvement in future designs. However, there is limited research examining the nature of the talk moves that teachers use to support elementary students to engage in diagnostic troubleshooting. This qualitative study uses conversational analysis to investigate the types of talk moves that elementary preservice teachers use when facilitating a small group discussion to engage three student avatars in diagnostic troubleshooting within a simulated classroom environment. Study results illustrate that the preservice teachers were most likely to use various engineering support moves to support the students in addressing aspects of the design or design process by asking the students to describe or explain their first or second designs. While less frequent, preservice teachers also used talk moves (a) to encourage discussion among the students, most often by tracking student ideas, and (b) that may hinder the team’s engagement in—and ownership of—the process of diagnostic troubleshooting, most often by evaluating students’ ideas. Considerations and ideas about supporting preservice teachers in learning how to use talk moves to productively engage their students in productive diagnostic troubleshooting are discussed.

Authors

Dr. Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2989-7969 Towson University [biography]

Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue, Ph.D., is Professor of Science and Engineering Education in the Department of Physics, Astronomy & Geosciences at Towson University. She has integrated engineering into courses for PreK-8 teacher candidates, developed and directed a graduate STEM program for PreK-6 teachers, and partnered with teachers to implement PreK-8 science-integrated engineering learning experiences. She has authored numerous engineering-focused teacher practitioner articles, chapters, and research articles, and presents her research regularly through the ASEE Pre-College Engineering Education Division, a division she has chaired. Her current research includes investigating how K-20 students plan, fail, and productively persist, and how simulated classroom environments can be used to help pre-service and in-service teachers practice facilitating discussions in science and engineering.
Dr. Jamie Mikeska [biography]

Jamie Mikeska is a Principal Research Scientist in the ETS Research Institute. Her research has targeted four related areas: (1) designing, developing, and conducting validation studies on assessments of content knowledge for teaching (CKT) science; (2) examining and understanding validity issues associated with measures designed to assess science teachers’ instructional quality, including observational measures, value-added measures, student surveys, and performance-based tasks; (3) extending and studying the use of these knowledge and instructional practices measures of science teaching quality as summative assessment tools for licensure purposes and as formative assessment tools integrated within teacher education and professional development contexts; and (4) examining how natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) can be used to support science teacher learning of key teaching competencies.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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