The attitudes of elementary teachers towards elementary engineering (research to practice)

With the new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) [1], elementary teachers are called for the first time to teach engineering to their students. For the teachers themselves, as well as those working to provide curriculum and professional development to elementary school teachers in engineering, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. Adoption of engineering curricula and pedagogies, although necessary to meet the new standards, will be affected by teachers' attitudes towards the new, unfamiliar subject area. Examining teachers' attitudes about engineering education would provide invaluable background information. For groups offering curricula and professional development aligned with the NGSS, this information would help develop interventions specifically designed to address challenges arising from teachers' attitudes about the newly required subject area. One other instrument currently exists to measure teachers' attitudes towards engineering; we drew from this instrument but also added questions focusing on pedagogy and enjoyment of teaching engineering. Our goal is, in particular, to detect changes in attitudes due to a curriculum and professional development intervention. Thus, in this paper we ask: 1. How can we design an instrument to measure teachers' attitudes about engineering? 2. What are the psychometrics and scales for this instrument? 3. What elementary school teacher attitudes about engineering education are revealed by this instrument? 4. Can this instrument show changes in attitudes due to an intervention?.