Engineering "Educator" Degree Programs

[ebarker]

Just to get the semantics correct, in general,
...Universities contain Colleges
......Colleges contain Schools
.........Schools contain Departments
............Departments contain the chair and faculty

There are two common models of creating science teachers

model 1) the College of Education teaches the science education courses to the students

model 2) the College of Education teachers educational pedagogy, and the College of Science teaches the teachers the science education courses

We use the 2nd model.

What if an engineering educator degree was created using the College of Education for pedagogy, and the College of Engineering for the engineering and technology courses ?

What if this degree had an intensive product development course, similiar to
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanica...i-spring-2009/
This course gave birth to FIRST, and can be used to train a teacher in the fundamentals of what it take to design, build, and deliver a product in a hurry.

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

What would this degree license the person to teach? How many part time teacher/part time coaches are there in your state?

I guess it boils down to: Is there a need for this? what does this do that your typical CTE teacher can't cover already?

Yes, this would lead to a teaching license. Echoing Glenn's comment, CTE teacher production is in dire straits.

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

I'm doing something very similar this fall with Georgia Tech and 1648's high school, where I will be a robotics coach/teaching assistant and be paid with a stipend. I'd definitely be interested in something like this in the future.

Is this leading to you earning certification as a teacher ?

Originally Posted by Siri

have you considered adding a master's degree program?

The OP mentioned BS only but we are actually mapping out several pathways and possibilities.

BS Degree, MS Degree, and certificate.

The thinking for the BS is that much of the upper division courses of an engineering degree isn't necessary for K-12 teaching, and many people that might want to participate in engineering type activities do not want to complete a full engineering degree. They would be better off focusing on principle of engineering and mastering the educational pedagogy, the how to teach it and how students learn. The BS route would best be for a high school student starting as a freshman, or a transfer student in from a 2 year community technical college.

It's a free country. If a candidate wants to get the full engineering degree, then extended training to become a teacher, by all means help yourself.

Requiring teachers to have a full engineering degree where they might have taken courses in stochastic theory, or deform-able bodies, or modulation theory, only slows down and reduces the supply of teachers. You reach a point of diminishing returns.

Still mapping out what MS, Phd and certificate should look like. There are a lot of ways to recruit candidates.

It is my opinion that the vast number of K-12 engineering and technology teachers will not come from engineering schools as pure engineers nor from educator schools as pure educators.

I believe there are a LOT of people that like technology and would be glad to teach pre-engineering and principle of engineer, and technology.

As earlier posters have stated, there isn't a lot of options for a high school graduates that want to go into middle/high school engineering education.