The Laboratory Practice of K-5 Teachers in an Engineering RET: Triangulating Perceptions and Experience

This study advances our team's overall design and development goal of creating a valid and reliable observation protocol for science and engineering practices (SEPs) experienced by teachers working in research laboratories under the auspices of Research Experience for Teachers (RET). This protocol offers the potential for addressing a wide range of persistent questions related to the experience of RET participants by looking inside the blackbox of apprenticed professional research practice. Framed by cognitive apprenticeship and situated in an engineering RET for K-5 teachers, we independently document the SEPs that were consistently experienced across laboratory contexts and thus define a generalized teacher experience. Further, we identify key associations among the teacher's perception of their work, an independent observation of that activity and the perceptions reported by their graduate student mentors. Findings indicate that teacher participants' perceptions of involvement and not actual experience was a more important predictor of confidence in practice. Perhaps most striking was the negative relationship between teacher confidence when working with mentors (r = -.242), which is similarly described by the mentors for working with teachers (r = -.356). This implies a strong need for further work and support for helping these unique individuals to understand each other's goals and perspectives and for finding a way to work together that generates mutual feelings of confidence and satisfaction.