Translating an engineering research project based on improving buildings' resistance to earthquake into the high school classroom experience

摘要

Earthquakes can cause damage and/or collapse of building structures. This phenomenon offers a real-life application of waves and resonance that teachers and students can discover while experimentally investigating retrofitting solutions for buildings subjected to earthquakes. In a NSF sponsored six-week summer Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program, university faculty and high school teachers partnered to develop lessons based on engineering concepts. During this program, a team of three teachers researched under the guidance of a dedicated faculty and doctoral student ways to improve buildings' resistance to earthquakes. The goals were two fold. First, high school teachers learned the technology and analysis tools necessary to implement an engineering research project. Second, they extracted from their research experience, key concepts and ideas that could be translated into the high school classroom. In this paper, we first present a summary of the high school teachers' research results. Then we describe an outline of the lessons they developed and implemented and the evaluations conducted.