Using Teaching Portfolios to Revise Curriculum and Explore Instructional Practices of Technology and Engineering Education Teachers

This paper reports on the use of teaching portfolios to assist in curriculum
revision and the exploration of instructional practices used by middle school
technology and engineering education teachers. Two new middle school
technology and engineering education units were developed through the
Engineering for All (EfA) project. One EfA unit focused on addressing world
food shortages via the design and construction of urban vertical hydroponic
farming systems, and the other focused on providing safe drinking water through
the design and construction of water filtration and purification systems (modeled
to reflect needs of people in a developing nation, in this case, Bangladesh). To
explore the implementation of the new EfA units by teachers and to help with
their revision, a new teaching portfolio instrument was developed, validated, and
used. The teaching portfolios that participating EfA teachers compiled were
evaluated based on a set of Design Teaching Standards that were developed for
the project, and which grew out of the informed design teaching and learning
model. Findings from the review of the teaching portfolios were used to (a)
revise the curriculum, (b) create design-based teaching performance rubrics, and
(c) develop specific materials for the professional development of prospective
EfA teachers. Findings from this research project were also used to explore the
strengths of middle school technology and engineering teachers and the
challenges that they face when supporting students in doing engineering design
in a social context.