Engaging secondary school teachers in engineering design: Lessons learned and assessment of a research experience for teachers program

Early exposure to engineering research and design experience is crucial for students as they enter college. However, this has been limited to the secondary school curriculum, as the majority of secondary school teachers lack the engineering background and experience. Addressing this challenge, this paper presents an engineering research experience program that took place over a span of three years to better prepare 36 secondary school teachers with support from 7 engineering faculty members. This program provides the teachers a broad overview of engineering design enhances their hands-on design abilities, and educates them to translate their learnings from engineering design experiences to lesson plans for their respective classrooms. Through the numerous feedback surveys, reflection sessions, lesson plans designed, outreach and dissemination activities, it was evident that 36 participant teachers were able to gain a better understanding of engineering design, enhance their respective classroom instructional modules, and improve their overall teaching effectiveness in secondary schools.