Progress 06/01/20 to 11/30/22
Outputs
Target Audience:The project has four target audiences. The first target audience are the teacher leaders (2 elementary classroom and 1 garden teacher) who helped develop and pilot the model unit. The second target audience is the two cohorts of elementary classroom and garden teachers who participated in the TiLLAGE professional development (PD) program and their students. These educators attended the two day professional learning workshop and the first cohort also attended three virtual follow up meetings. A third target audience are the students in the classes of both the teacher leaders and educators who participated in the TiLLAGE PD program. These students all received engineering in the garden learning experiences as a direct result of their teachers participation in the pilot or PD program. A final target audience are classroom teachers, garden educators, professional development providers, and school administrators across the country who are seeking open educational development resources developed through this project to help educators to use gardens as sites for agricultural engineering. Changes/Problems:Because we only had 15 educators participate in the Spring 2022 PD program (see Year 2 progress report), the project team decided to add a second, modified workshop in September 2022 to have broader reach. The project team facilitated a modified 2-day workshop version of the PD program in September 2022 in which 25 additional garden educators participated. All participants received materials to teach the Designing Trellises model unit. Extra funds from participant support were reallocated to cover supplies and staff time to run this second program. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? 25 classroom teachers, garden educators, and science lab teachers participated in the 2-day September 2022 TiLLAGE PD program. They gained training in garden-based engineering pedagogy and curriculum as well as what engineering solutions and tools are used in farms and gardens. Two additional teacher leaders and one new Life Lab staff member were trained on how to facilitate the revised and 2-day version of the TiLLAGE PD program. They co-facilitated the September 2022 programa and will continue to help facilitate the workshop in the future after the end of the grant period. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project team developed a website where all of the model unit and workshop resources are freely available here: https://sites.google.com/bscs.org/tillage/home?pli=1. As of 11/27/22, there were 560 views and 460 unique visitors to the website. The project's three minute video, Engineering in the Garden, for the 2022 NSF STEM videohall showcase that was presented in May 2022 has received 1310 views from around the world as of November 18, 2022 and received a Facilitators Choice award. ? The project team drafted and submitted an article for Science and Children. This article was submitted in January2023 and is currently under review. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The following is a summary of the project accomplishment and impact. In addition, please see the full program evaluation report. Project objectives During this reporting period, the project evaluation team collected final post-program survey data, conducted analyses, and drafted a final project report. Findings from this report were used to inform revisions to the TiLLAGE professional development (PD) program. The project team revised the PD program and recruited 25 additional educators to participate in a modified version of the PD program. This version included only a 2-day workshop but not the 3 follow up virtual sessions. The two day workshop took place over a Thursday and Friday in September 2022. Educators are currently teaching their Engineering in the Garden units in Fall 2022. All resources from the PD program are freely available on the project website. Teacher objectives We developed and tested a pre- and post- program video analysis task in consultation with one of our advisory board members with expertise in elementary engineering. Teachers analyzed elements of engineering design that were present and absent from a clip of the Design Squad television show where high school students work together to take on engineering projects for real clients. Educators completed this task before and after the TiLLAGE PD program. We used an open coding process to assess what parts of engineering design teachers gained knowledge in and analyzed the results with a paired t-test. Teachers showed a significant medium improvement of their content knowledge of engineering design [video task scores prior to the workshop (M = 6.69, SD = 1.65) and video task scores after teaching the unit (M = 8.38, SD = 2.18), t(12) = 2.67, p = .020. Teachers had an average of differences of 1.69, with a standard deviation of 2.29.]. Teachers expanded their understanding of various aspects of engineering activities including asking questions, defining problems, empathizing, and making decisions. We used open response self reflection questions to assess teachers' understanding of agricultural careers and analyzed their responses by coding for themes in their responses. Teachers reported improving their knowledge of agricultural careers by 1) expanding their perceptions of engineered technology, like simple everyday tools and machines and 2) deepening their understanding of the engineering involved in agriculture and how they could incorporate engineering into the garden. We used a pre- and post- program survey to measure teachers' self-efficacy as a proxy for pedagogical content knowledge (which we could not measure because we could not observe in classrooms due to COVID-19). Survey items were adapted from the Teaching Engineering Self-efficacy Scale (TESS) from Yoon and colleagues (2014). We analyzed the survey using a paired t-test and found a significant improvement in teacher self-efficacy scores after the program [self-efficacy scores before the program (M = 4.53, SD = 0.56) and self-efficacy scores after the program (M = 5.68, SD = 0.25), t(12) = 7.71, p < .001. Teachers had an average of differences of 1.15 with a standard deviation of 0.54]. We also included one open-response question on the post survey as well as open-ended prompts on surveys collected during the virtual follow-up sessions. Specifically, teachers reported gaining confidence to facilitate groups of students doing engineering outside with hands-on building materials. Teachers also reported gaining more confidence to facilitate engineering in which students take the lead. All participating teachers reported via the post-program survey that they incorporated more engineering in the garden into their teaching than previous years. Classroom teachers spent on average 8.8 hours with 1-2 classes and garden educators spent 5.5 hours with each class. Many garden educators taught their unit to more than one class. Educators reported strong student engagement, collaboration and student agency in their engineering in the garden units. Educators struggled with time constraints and materials management with young learners. Program impact Overall, 42 educators received professional development (15 educators in the February-May 2022 cohort, 25 educators in the September 2022 cohort, and 3 teacher leaders). These teachers gained knowledge of engineering design and agricultural careers as well as confidence to facilitate agricultural engineering in the garden. They also changed their teaching practice by implementing more agricultural engineering. Through these units, the first cohort of teachers impacted over 700 students. We do not know how many students were impacted through the second cohort of educators, as they are not yet finished teaching their units at the time of this report.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Harris, E. M., Lowe, I., Mohan, L., Cohen, W., Severance, S., Giotta, J., Albano, C., and Snowden, J. (under review). Designing Trellises: Cultivating Science and Engineering in the Garden. Submitted to Science and Children.
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Harris, E. M. (August 18, 2022). Designing Trellises. BSCS Science Learning. https://sites.google.com/bscs.org/tillage/home?pli=1
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Progress 06/01/21 to 05/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:One target audience during the reporting period included 2 elementary classroom and 1 garden teacher and their students who piloted the model engineering design unit. These teachers all taught an 8-lesson, 3 week unit with one class of students, collectively reaching approximately 60 students. A second target audience reached during this reporting period included 15 elementary classroom and garden teachers who participated in the TiLLAGE professional learning program and their students. These educators attended the two day professional learning workshop and virtual study groups. They all taught either the model engineering in the garden unit or a unit of their own design to one or more classes of 2nd-5th grade students. Changes/Problems:The impacts of COVID-19 caused the project to make some changes. First, one teacher co-designer and piloter decided to no longer participate in the program, bringing our co-design team of teacher leaders down to three educators. Second, during the Fall 2021 piloting, there were restrictions on visitors entering classrooms which impacted our ability to film teachers in action. We had planned to develop 6 videocases from filming in the classroom, which we were not able to do. We were able to get into one classroom during one week and we developed 1 videocase for the PD workshop during that time. Third, the implementation workshop was supposed to be a 3 day summer workshop. Because we shifted the timeline to 6 months later than anticipated, we ran the PD as a two-day weekend workshop. This was recommended because substitutes during the pandemic were very difficult to find. Fourth, we recruited 20 educators to participate in the program in Fall 2021, but our PD workshop fell during the Omicron wave so we ended up with some attrition and only 15 educators participating. Due to limited ability to videotape in classrooms because of COVID restrictions on visitors, we decided to operationalize teacher pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as self-efficacy to facilitate engineering in gardens through an educator survey rather than through filming in classrooms. Due to teachers units which spanned different science content areas, we decided to operationalize our measure of teachers' content knowledge to focus on understanding of the engineering design process. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Three teacher leaders participated in unit design and development of the model unit, with a focus on NGSS and engineering. They gained insight into the revision aspect of the curriculum development process. One of these teacher leaders also helped facilitate the PD workshop and gained training in designing and facilitating educator professional learning. Life Lab and BSCS Science Learning team members met with the project advisory board once during the reporting period and they offered insights into the design of the PD to support teacher learning. 15 classroom teachers, garden educators, and science lab teachers participated in the TiLLAGE PD program. They gained training in garden-based engineering pedagogy and curriculum as well as what engineering solutions and tools are used in farms and gardens. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Emily Harris (BSCS Science Learning) and Sara Severance (Life Lab) presented Cultivating future engineers in the garden to three different science education and/or garden education audiences. This presentation was given at the California Association for Science Educators virtual conference, October 2021 Kids Gardening virtual webinar, March 2022 Growing School Gardens Summit in Denver, Colorado, April 2022 The project team developed and disseminated a three minute video, Engineering in the Garden, for the 2022 NSF STEM videohall showcase. The video was presented at the virtual showcase from May 10th - May 17th and will remain on the STEM for ALL website for years to come. We also developed a TiLLAGE website landing page from which links to the model unit and workshop materials will be linked as well as Life Lab's workshop offerings in the future, which will include a two day version of this program. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next and final reporting period, the project team will finish the evaluation and revisions for the professional development program. We plan to complete the final participant survey for the evaluation, analyze the data, and report findings to inform the revisions to the PD program. We plan to recruit another set of participants and run a second two-day Engineering in the Garden workshop in September 2022. This was not in the original plan and we decided to do this because we want to reach more teachers and the project team has enthusiasm to run the workshop again following revisions from the evaluation. We also plan to draft an article for submission to Science and Children about the model engineering in the garden unit to further disseminate ideas to educators. We will finish the permissions and production process for the model garden-based engineering unit and post these materials, garden-based engineering unit development tools, and 1 videocase to share the freely available resources with broad audiences.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During this reporting period, the project finished activities in Phase 1, the development of the professional development (PD) program. This included developing the model engineering design unit around which the professional learning program is based and piloting it. Three educators, two classroom teachers and one garden educator, piloted the unit in Fall 2021, reaching approximately 60 students. After unit piloting, the project team took feedback from the pilot and revised the model unit. The team developed one videocase to use in professional learning to showcase how to develop a classroom culture that supports student's collaborative group work in gardens. The team developed an agenda and learning activities for the two-day PD workshop as well as the virtual follow up meetings. Towards the Phase 2 implementation and testing activities, the project team recruited 20 participants including classroom teachers, garden educators, and science lab teachers. Due to attrition from the Omicron surge, 15 of those participants recruited participated in the professional learning program. The two day workshop took place over two Saturdays in February. Educators then meet for three after school virtual study group sessions as they implemented their engineering in the garden lessons in March, April, and May. The project evaluation team developed instruments for data collection in Fall 2021 and collected data from January - May 2022. This included a pre- and post- program educator survey, embedded reflection prompts during PD activities, and observation field notes from PD sessions. We are finishing up data collection at the end of this month.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Severance, S., Harris, E.M. (2022, April 24). Cultivating future engineers in the garden. Growing School Gardens Summit, Denver, CO.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Severance, S., Harris, E.M. (2021, October 8-10). Cultivating future engineers in the garden. California Association of Science Educators Conference, Virtual.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Harris, E.M., Snowden, J., Severance, S., Cohen, W., Lowe, I., Giotta, T.J. (2022, May 10-17). Engineering in the Garden. NSF STEM for All Video Showcase. Available at: https://stemforall2022.videohall.com/presentations/2348?panel=mc#panel-jq
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Progress 06/01/20 to 05/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience reached during this reporting period included 4 elementary classroom and garden teachers and their students. These teachers helped co-design the model engineering design unit through virtual design workshops and ongoing meetings. All of these teachers surveyed their studnets about what engineering design challenges would be interesting to their students. Three of these teachers informally piloted 4 of the 8 lessons through distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Changes/Problems:The impacts of COVID-19 on travel, schools and learning have caused the project to make changes to the design conference and project timeline. Because meeting in person for the co-design charette at Life Lab in Santa Cruz, California was not an option, the design conference took place over Zoom. Using online collaborative tools such as Google Docs, Zoom, Jamboard and others the team was able to select a design challenge, identify learning goals and prepare for developing the unit as proposed. As teachers have not been in classrooms the team delayed piloting the unit from the original time frame of November 2020 - February 2021 to September - November 2021. Phase 2 of the project, the implementation phase has been delayed from July 2021 - May 2022 to February 2022 - December 2022. Instead of a 3 day summer workshop, we plan to run the PD as a two-day weekend workshop February 2022, as teachers have less available time in the winter than they do during the summer for professional learning. In addition, due to demands on teacher participants from COVID in this past school year, we are considering alternative structures for the virtual study groups to provide substantial, but not overwhelming ongoing support to teachers who participate. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Life Lab and BSCS Science Learning team members have had the opportunity to meet with advisory board member Kristen Wendell to learn about her work with engineering design frameworks. Wendell's expertise in this area help the team design an engineering design framework for use in the project.? During the design conference the team and teacher leaders had the opportunity to learn from LifeLab staff member John Fisher who presented on engineering on the farm sharing different engineering solutions and tools used in farms and gardens. Four teacher leaders participated in unit design and development of the model unit, with a focus on NGSS and engineering. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Emily Harris presented the paper Place-based Storyline Design: Selecting an Anchoring Problem for Engineering in the Garden at the 2021 International NARST Conference. The paper and presentation reported on the team's effort and process in the design conference to select an anchoring design challenge for the model unit. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The next reporting period includes activities in Phase 1 and Phase 2. Additional Phase 1 activities (September-2021 - January 2022) will include piloting the full model unit with three teacher leaders (one teacher leader dropped out due to personal reasons), revising the model unit, and developing the professional learning. During this time we hope to film one teacher to develop a video-case for the PD. Schools in California have just reopening for hybrid in person instruction this spring, so we are developing contingency plans for the PD if schools won't allow us to bring a videographer into the classroom in the Fall. In addition, the team will develop instruments and data collection protocols to measure the teacher objectives. We will also start Phase 2 activities, which include the implementation of the teacher professional development (February - May 2022). This will include recruiting 20 teachers to participate in the PD program including an multi-day intensive launch, virtual study group sessions, and supporting teachers as they implement engineering in the garden lessons in Spring 2022.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The project accomplishments during Phase 1, the development phase, fell under the first project objective, focusing on developing an model engineering design unit to be used in the curriculum-based professional development (PD) program. To begin developing the unit, the project team including Life Lab and BSCS Science Learning staff as well as four teacher leaders met on Zoom across four days in June 2020. The team generated and evaluated over 30 candidate design problems, and used student interest surveys and grade-level appropriateness to select one design challenge around which to anchor the model unit: designing trellises to support climbing pea plants. From July 2020 - April 2021 the team developed an 7 lesson unit around this design challenge. This process began with unpacking the Next Generation Science Standards Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) and Science and Engineering Practices (SEP) that would be appropriate for this unit. Then, the team outlined a high-level storyline for the unit and iteratively developed the unit into eight lessons. The Life Lab and BSCS Science Learning staff wrote detailed plans for each lesson. Three teachers piloted a modified version of four different lessons virtually, and with this teacher and student feedback, the team revised and refined the lessons into a complete example unit that will be used in the professional development during Phase 2.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Harris, E. M., Mohan, L., Cohen, W., Severance, S., & Snowden, J. (2021, April 7-10) Place-based storyline design: Selecting an anchoring problem for engineering in the garden Paper presented at National Association of Research in Science Teaching.
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