Creating a Foundation for Engineering Education in Five K-12 Rural School Districts

Abstract: This conference paper is authored by Stephen Marlette, Allison Fahsl, Gary Moyer and Georgia Bracey of the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SUIC)

This paper describes the first phase of multi-year university lead partnership with rural school districts. A professional development model was designed to provide teachers in these rural schools access to professional development focused in the area of engineering design at the K-5 level. The project evaluation utilized a quasi-experimental approach to follow a cohort of twenty-six teachers and twenty-five comparison group teachers. Overall, the data suggest the project has been successful thus far in achieving the goal of increasing rural K-12 teachers’ understanding of engineering design and technology concepts.

Keywords: STEM - Conference Proceedings - K-12 Outreach - Partnering