Teachers in Industry: Measuring the Impact of a K-12 Teacher Internship Program

摘要

The importance of STEM learning is becoming common knowledge across the educational community. Although many people will have different opinions about what true STEM learning is, most everyone will agree that making the classroom content relevant for students is a critical component. This also involves incorporating specific delivery techniques such as hands-on learning and inquiry-based instruction. Teachers are also continuously challenged with developing classroom activities that are engaging for students and involve an authentic component to real-world contexts. For many teachers this can be a challenge, since most teachers that have earned a teaching license through traditional methods do not have corporate work experience. Therefore, having the knowledge about how industry is currently using different processes to solve technological problems may not be familiar to most teachers. By giving teachers an opportunity to work in a corporate environment as part of an internship program, they can bring valuable knowledge back to the classroom. This can be new knowledge about the engineering design process (EDP), 21st century skills, team collaboration, global communication, problem-solving, critical-thinking, or many other types of skills needed to be successful in the workplace. Being able to increase student engagement through the use of these authentic skills will help better equip them for the future. Therefore, if teachers are to be challenged to train the future workforce, they need to have an understanding of how the current workforce operates.