2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Out-of-school time educators have limited professional development opportunities, particularly around engineering, despite the discipline’s popularity in informal learning contexts (e.g., afterschool programs, library workshops, or camps) [1]-[3]. In this National Science Foundation Advancing Informal Science Learning (NSF AISL)-funded research study, we are investigating ways to support informal educators in leading high-quality engineering activities in out-of-school time (OST) contexts. This multi-year study focuses on understanding OST educators’ instructional strategies during participation in a Community of Practice-style professional development experience and subsequent teaching of OST engineering programs for rural elementary-aged youth.

In Year 1, we engaged six OST educators in a collaborative virtual Community of Practice to design and teach a series of six engineering lessons to rural youth ages 8-12. In the Community of Practice meetings, researchers and OST educators discussed engineering pedagogical practices, considered goals of teaching engineering to youth, and co-developed the engineering curriculum. While the broader goal of this study is to specifically understand educators’ pedagogical talk moves - the verbal questions and statements educators say to youth working independently or in small groups during engineering activities - in this first year of the project, we did not explicitly introduce or emphasize talk moves as an instructional strategy. Talk moves are one tool that educators can use to elicit learners’ engineering reasoning and sensemaking, encourage explorative learning, and support productive participation in engineering design [4], [5]. In the first phase of this study, we focused on capturing and characterizing experienced STEM educators’ existing instructional strategies and talk moves in OST engineering through recordings of the bi-monthly Community of Practice meetings, pre-post individual educator interviews, teaching observations, and group reflections on engineering enactments.

In this poster presentation and associated paper, we will present key findings from Year 1, including the instructional strategies suggested or noticed by OST Educators over the course of the first project year. We saw emergent themes around instructional strategies, including a focus on pre-instructional planning, framing, engineering norms, mid-design talk moves, and real-world contexts. Going forward in this study, we are working with an expanded group of OST educators, with whom we will deliberately engage in developing and utilizing engineering talk moves, among other instructional strategies, and we will also begin examining the possible effect of changes in instructional strategies on youth participation in engineering during these programs.

References
[1] L. Uyen Tran and H. King, “The Professionalization of Museum Educators: The Case in Science Museums,” Mus. Manag. Curatorship, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 131–149, June 2007, doi: 10.1080/09647770701470328.
[2] B. Bevan and J. Dillon, “Broadening Views of Learning: Developing Educators for the 21st Century Through an International Research Partnership at the Exploratorium and King’s College London,” New Educ., vol. 6, no. 3–4, pp. 167–180, Sept. 2010, doi: 10.1080/1547688X.2010.10399599.
[3] M. Ennes, M. G. Jones, and K. Chesnutt, “Evaluation of Educator Self-Efficacy in Informal Science Centers,” J. Mus. Educ., vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 327–339, July 2020, doi: 10.1080/10598650.2020.1771993.
[4] B. M. Capobianco, J. DeLisi, and J. Radloff, “Characterizing elementary teachers’ enactment of high‐leverage practices through engineering design‐based science instruction,” Sci. Educ., vol. 102, no. 2, pp. 342–376, Mar. 2018, doi: 10.1002/sce.21325.
[5] K. Miel et al., “Characterizing engineering outreach educators’ talk moves: An exploratory framework,” J. Eng. Educ., vol. 112, no. 2, pp. 337–364, Apr. 2023, doi: 10.1002/jee.20514.