UTeachEngineering: Preparing Effective Engineering Teachers Begins with Defining an Exceptional, Year-Long High School Engineering Course

UTeachEngineering is a targeted MSP project whose goals include creating effective professional development programs for pre-service and in-service secondary engineering educators. To begin with the end in mind, the UTeachEngineering team started with the question of what sort of course its participants should be prepared to teach upon completing the program. In other words, what constitutes an exceptional year-long high school engineering course?

To answer this question, UTeachEngineering convened a team comprising engineering faculty, clinical engineering faculty (professionals with experience as both practicing engineers and secondary classroom teachers), engineering research fellows, and learning sciences faculty. Incorporating feedback from high school teachers involved in an earlier pilot project, this team undertook a rigorous, 18-month course design process. The result, Engineer Your World, is the subject of this poster.