Development of a Hybrid Community of Practice Course Model to Prepare Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Engineering in K-12 (Work in Progress)

Abstract To create a more engineering literate society, diversify the engineering workforce, and encourage and prepare more students to pursue engineering careers, there is an urgent need to increase the capacity for teaching engineering in K-12, and one way to increase the number of K-12 teachers who are able to successfully integrate engineering into the curriculum is to provide pre-service teachers with direct experience with engineering education. To address this need at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, a new course has been developed, in which pre-service teachers work with engineering undergraduate students to learn about K-12 engineering education, develop lesson plans and projects that can be used both in the K-12 classroom and in informal educational settings, and work directly with K-12 students at after-school engineering clubs, STEM family nights, and other outreach activities. The course is structured to facilitate the development of a community of practice consisting of both pre-service teachers and engineering students. The ultimate goal of this work is to develop best practices and models for training pre-service teachers to teach engineering effectively. This paper will present an overview of the structure of the course, including a description of the projects and reflections students will complete.