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Using Student Video Cases to Assess Pre-service Elementary Teachers’ Engineering Teaching Responsiveness

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Abstract

Our study addresses the need for new approaches to prepare novice elementary teachers to teach both science and engineering, and for new tools to measure how well those approaches are working. This in particular would inform the teacher educators of the extent to which novice teachers are developing expertise in facilitating their students’ engineering design work. One important dimension to measure is novice teachers’ abilities to notice the substance of student thinking and to respond in productive ways. This teacher noticing is particularly important in science and engineering education, where students’ initial, idiosyncratic ideas and practices influence the likelihood that particular instructional strategies will help them learn. This paper describes evidence of validity and reliability for the Video Case Diagnosis (VCD) task, a new instrument for measuring pre-service elementary teachers’ engineering teaching responsiveness. To complete the VCD, participants view a 6-min video episode of children solving an engineering design problem, describe in writing what they notice about the students’ science ideas and engineering practices, and propose how a teacher could productively respond to the students. The rubric for scoring VCD responses allowed two independent scorers to achieve inter-rater reliability. Content analysis of the video episode, systematic review of literature on science and engineering practices, and solicitation of external expert educator responses establish content validity for VCD. Field test results with three different participant groups who have different levels of engineering education experience offer evidence of construct validity.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant DRL-1253344. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Science and Mathematics in Context, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA

    Tejaswini Dalvi

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

    Kristen Wendell

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  1. Tejaswini Dalvi
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  2. Kristen Wendell
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Correspondence to Tejaswini Dalvi.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Video Case Diagnosis No. 1: the “Peach Lifter” Case

We will view a 6-min video clip (in two parts) of two fourth-grade students attempting to design a “peach lifter” for the characters in the book James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.

□ Before viewing the video, read over the transcript.

□ Feel free to take notes on the transcript before or while viewing the video.

□ After viewing the video, please respond to the following four questions.

1. What science ideas, or ideas or thoughts about science phenomena, did the students express?

2. What practices, processes, or skills of science did the students exhibit, and what evidence do you have that they were exhibited?

Science skills/practices/processes

Evidence they were exhibited

3. What practices, processes, or skills of engineering did the students exhibit, and what evidence do you have that they were exhibited?

Science skills/practices/processes

Evidence they were exhibited

4. What are three possible ways the teacher might respond to help these students further develop their ideas and practices? (In other words, what are three possible next steps for the teacher?)

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Dalvi, T., Wendell, K. Using Student Video Cases to Assess Pre-service Elementary Teachers’ Engineering Teaching Responsiveness. Res Sci Educ 47, 1101–1125 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-016-9547-5

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