Interested in bringing Novel Engineering to your school? We’ll come to you!
NE Professional Development consists of three main strands.
- Engaging teachers in engineering by having them work through Novel Engineering activities – This allows teachers to experience engineering themselves and reflect on their own understandings of engineering and the engineering design process. Our main objective during these activities is to help develop teachers’ disciplinary sense for what engineering is and how the approach can be implemented.
- Looking at video of students’ engaged in Novel Engineering activities to understand what NE looks like in a classroom and to identify the beginning of engineering in an integrated activity – The second strand also focuses on developing teachers’ disciplinary sense for engineering, but this time in the context of looking for beginnings of engineering in students’ work.
- Planning Novel Engineering activities for the classroom – Lastly, our PD model supports teachers in planning their own activities, with explicit focus on anticipating how their students may respond. Asking teachers to anticipate while planning their lessons can focus attention back to the students. Furthermore, it allows teachers to check to see if the tasks allow for multiple design paths and solutions, giving room for student creativity.
Contact Elissa Milto at elissa.milto@tufts.edu for additional information.