A teacher's appropriation of the engineering design process reframed restrictive STEM narratives in her teaching and personal life¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · qualitative r2 · q1 · n=1 elementary teacher, 18-month online graduate certificate program (Tufts TEEP)
Currency · newest study 2023 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Over an 18-month graduate certificate program, a white, working-class elementary teacher's discourse about the engineering design process (EDP) shifted from describing it as a fixed linear sequence to describing it as nonlinear and personally-owned, and she used this reframed understanding to reclassify her own family's work as engineering, to advocate for student tinkering time in colleagues' classrooms, and to reinterpret her son's non-traditional academic path as "still STEM."

Subclaims¶

q1 i? The teacher's discourse shifted, documented across interviews and course posts, from an early description of the EDP as a fixed sequence ("ask, imagine, plan, create, improve, and communicate... these steps") to a later description explicitly naming its nonlinearity ("it can skip from one step to another, go backwards, go forward, and so forth... it doesn't have to go in that order"). → Watkins 2023

q1 i? The teacher used her expanded EDP framework to reclassify her parents' textile-factory work as engineering ("my dad was even an engineer because he had to fix the looms... mom, she was a supervisor, so it was like she was the engineer"), and to describe her own son's hands-on garage projects, despite his academic struggles, as "still STEM." → Watkins 2023

q1 i? The teacher applied her reframed understanding to classroom advocacy: she trained 11 classrooms in her school to prioritize open-ended "tinkering" over scripted tutorials, and reported extending project timelines (from single 45-minute periods to up to 10 days) because "I need to give my kids a little bit more time... if it takes more than one class period, that's okay." → Watkins 2023

Evidence¶

Watkins 2023¶

Watkins, J. (2023). "That is Still STEM": Appropriating the Engineering Design Process to Challenge Dominant Narratives of Engineering and STEM. Cognition and Instruction, 41(4), 405-435. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2022.2156512

q1 · single-case study using post-hoc qualitative coding (Levrini et al.'s appropriation markers) of interviews, discussion posts, and classroom artifacts collected across an 18-month program; no pre-registered design, no comparison teacher, and the author co-designed the professional-development courses being studied i? · the abstract prints no effect size; the full text may n=1 elementary teacher, 18-month online graduate certificate program (Tufts TEEP) · qualitative · r2

A single white, working-class, first-generation-college-graduate elementary teacher was tracked across an 18-month engineering-education graduate certificate program via six interviews, discussion-board posts, lab reflections, and a final course project. Discourse was coded against Levrini et al.'s appropriation markers (idiosyncratic, disciplinarily-grounded, thick, nonincidental, relational) to trace how her account of the engineering design process changed, and how she subsequently used that changed account to challenge restrictive STEM narratives in her own family history, her son's education, and her classroom advocacy. This informs Appropriating Disciplinary Tools to Challenge Restrictive Narratives.

Discussion¶

This is a single-case study (n=1) with research questions about appropriation and sociohistorical narratives that emerged post-hoc, after the program had ended, rather than being pre-registered; the author was also involved in designing the professional-development courses being studied, which is acknowledged as a positionality concern. There is no measure of whether this teacher's changed practice (more tinkering time, flexible pacing) affected her students' engineering learning or STEM identity. The findings should be read as a detailed, well-evidenced illustration of a possible mechanism, not as evidence of how common or reliable this kind of shift is across teachers or programs.

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