Engineering for Teachers of Migrant Students (ETMS)

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ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING SCIENCEVolume 23, Number 3, 2006© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Engineering for Teachers of Migrant Students (ETMS)

Isabel Escobar,1,* Mark Pickett,2 Constance Schall,1 and Maria Coleman1

1Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department2Civil Engineering Department

The University of ToledoToledo, OH

ABSTRACT

One of the difficulties in teaching mathematics and science to migrant Hispanic students is that they donot see a connection between math and their daily lives. Therefore, to successfully teach migrants, teach-ers must make mathematics an engaging subject to their students’ lives. Engineering for Teachers of Mi-grant Students (ETMS) is a project that promotes a holistic philosophy of teaching and learning mathe-matics and science with a vision of helping to create a scientifically literate community of youth Hispanicmigrant learners and adult teacher–scholars. It provides classroom opportunities for teacher participantsto engage in hands-on environmental engineering-based learning activities related to math and science. Inthe program, mathematics and science professional and preservice teachers are exposed to new and en-gaging hands-on problem solving activities to stimulate student interest and encourage their intellectualand scientific development. Activities help teachers develop new ways of creating productive, engagingand inquiry-based environments that promote migrant student interest in the life-long learning of mathand science. Evaluation results indicated that for the 2001 teacher participants, 93% learned new conceptswhich could be taken back to their classrooms, 90% learned new instructional approaches, and 75% par-ticipated in hands-on activities that could be used in their classrooms.

Key words: minority education; hands-on; science proficiency; environmental outreach activities; pre-college

Corresponding author: Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department, the University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606.Phone: 419-530-8267; Fax: 419-530-8086 E-mail: [email protected]

INTRODUCTION

SCIENCE TEACHER EDUCATION is concerned with help-ing teachers develop the ability to create learning en-

vironments for their students. To do this, teachers needa firm understanding of content and methods to supportlearners of science. This includes an understanding of the

“process” of applied science to help candidates and theirfuture students appreciate the role engineering plays intheir lives. However, engineering education often focusessolely on presentation of content, with little regard forthe needs of learners. To excite the future engineeringstudents and attract a wide range of learning styles, ped-agogy should be explicitly considered. Thus, engineering

educators need to attract students from a variety of un-derrepresented groups. In addition, many engineering ed-ucators are involved in community action and hope toimprove the quality of precollege education in math andscience, to support not only future engineers, but also todevelop an appreciation and understanding of engineer-ing in the general population. These outreach activitiesoften include in-service training of science educators.

The migrant population is the most undereducated sub-group in the United States (Romanowski, 2003), and maybe the most disadvantaged student population in Amer-ica (Perry, 1997). The purpose of Improving America’sSchools Act of 1994 (IASA), Title I, Part C, is to assiststates in support of high-quality comprehensive educa-tional programs for migratory children to help reduce theeducational disruptions and other problems that resultfrom repeated moves. Section 1308 of IASA states thatthe term “migratory child” means a child who is, or whoseparent is, a migratory agricultural worker, and who, inthe preceding 36 months, in order to obtain temporary orseasonal employment in agricultural work, has movedfrom one school district to another. Section 1308 also de-fines “seasonal employment” as nonpermanent agricul-tural work that depends on natural cycles of the earth,and that such activities take place about the same timeeach year. During the year 2001, the Ohio Migrant Edu-cation Center (OMEC) serviced 7,637 migrant students.Engineering for Teachers of Migrant Students (ETMS),is targeted at teachers in school districts/counties whichserviced these migrant students. Most of the migrant stu-dents in Ohio migrated from Texas and Florida.

Several special problems exist in the migrant studentpopulation. One difficulty faced by approximately 25%of migrant students is that they enroll in school more than30 days after the term has begun (Research Triangle In-stitute, 1992). Not only do they have late starts, but theymay move in and out of school districts up to 10 timesduring a school year (Trotter, 1992). In the Summer andFall, OMEC sends teachers to areas where migrant fam-ilies are working to help solve this problem. Addition-ally, curriculum specialists report that poor academic per-formance and low self-esteem of migrant students can beattributed largely to the failure of existing school cur-riculums and instructional materials to reflect the aspira-tions, histories, and lifestyles of migrant students (Gon-zalez Gutierrez, 1993). ETMS activities are grounded intheir real-life experiences to reflect the characteristics ofmigrant students.

Language barriers isolate migrant students (Ford,1988), and causes them to sense that they do not belong.The situation worsens when migrants become victims ofstereotypes, such as when they are believed to be “slow”because of poor English skills (Romanowski, 2003). Lim-

ited English proficiency students encounter language bar-riers in learning mathematical concepts because numer-als are not universal in all languages and cultures (Secada,1992). Research shows that migrant students do well inlearning settings that include hands-on activities and thatdraw on their lifestyles and experiments, such as their ex-tensive traveling (Johnson et al., 1983). These strategieslower the anxiety of school and increase self-esteem andmotivation, areas in which migrant students lack.

One of the difficulties in mathematics education is thatmigrant students do not see a connection between mathand their daily lives. Therefore, to successfully teach mi-grants, teachers must make mathematics an engaging sub-ject to their students’ lives (Reyes and Fletcher, 2003).ETMS includes several activities to develop an in-depthknowledge base for the teaching of math and science asone integrated unit. In the program, mathematics and sci-ence professional and preservice teachers are exposed tonew and engaging hands-on problem-solving activitiesand experiences to stimulate student interest and encour-age their intellectual and scientific development. Activi-ties help teachers develop new ways of creating produc-tive, engaging, and inquiry-based environments thatpromote migrant student interest in the life-long learningof math and science. Teachers are provided with oppor-tunities to develop alternative strategies using inquiry andproblem solving hands-on approaches for teaching mi-grant students to be more proficient in math and scienceto pass proficiency and other standardized tests in Ohio,or Texas, or Florida.

OBJECTIVES

Education stands at the heart of the development ofscience and technology in any community. Educatingshould be something that students do and not what is doneto them (Sanderson et al., 2001). Children are bombardedwith environmental questions and issues, such as thegreenhouse effect, ozone layer depletion, and recycling,among others. Therefore, our cities are actually materialscience jungles (Sanderson et al., 2001). Therefore, en-vironmental engineering issues are a portion of migrantstudents’ reality and are issues they are already familiarwith. Their incorporation in migrant education helps inencouraging migrant student participation in classroomactivities. For this reason, ETMS focuses on recyclingand polymer characterization.

While there are a number of sources of solid waste,this program focuses on plastics or polymers. Throughrethinking, reuse, recycling, reducing, and rebuiling, peo-ple can reduce wastes or turn them into useful products.Voluntarily, industry provides recycling codes which ap-

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pear on the bottom of packaged materials. PETE[poly(ethylene terephthalate], is commonly used in twoliter pop bottles, HDPE (high-density polyethylene) inmilk jugs, PVC [poly(vinyl chloride)], for vegetable oilbottles, LDPE (low density polyethylene) in coffee canlids, PP (polypropylene) in yogurt containers, and PS(polystyrene) in foamed egg cartons or clear bakery trays.These are shown in Table 1.

While ETMS is a program that covers a range of mathand science tracks, such as bridges and biotechnology,only the environmental track that focuses on polymer re-cycling is discussed here. The purpose of ETMS is to col-lect and combine a series of existing experiments to de-velop a teaching track on polymer recycling to teachyoung migrant students about the need for plastic recy-cling and the steps involved in recycling. The experi-ments chosen were modified when necessary to increasetheir hands-on nature to better reflect the education needsof migrant students.

EXPERIMENTS INDEGRADATION/RECYCLING

OF PLASTICS

An average American produces approximately 4.5pounds of trash per day (U.S. EPA, www.epa.gov/msw/facts.htm). This includes all households both migrant andnonmigrant living in the United States. Lifestyles of mi-grants are brought into the activity by describing howtrash is handled. For instance, up until the late 1800s, Eu-rope and the United States took care of the solid wasteproblem by dumping, slopping, and scavenging; animalsate at food dumps in the streets, and humans scavengedfor items to sell among the trash of others. Today, thereare four ways to handle solid waste (garbage): (1) dumpit, (2) burn it, (3) convert it for recycling and reuse, and(4) minimize the volume of material goods produced inthe first place (separating minimization and source re-duction). Many operating landfills are to capacity levels.Further, older landfills do not have environmental safeliners of plastic and clay to prevent contamination ofground water supplies, and they do not have facilities forsafe release of methane gas (Harris, 1996).

The national landfill problem has brought plastics tothe forefront as an enigma in the packaging world. Plas-tics deteriorate but do not decompose completely overdecades. Glass, paper, or aluminum also decompose veryslowly or negligibly in landfills. Plastics make up about9% of our trash by weight compared to paper, which con-stitutes about 36%. Rubber, textiles, and leather add anadditional 5% by weight. A major operating problem for

many landfills is thin film plastic bags being blown bythe wind. Every year Americans produce 156 million tonsof trash (Alexander, 1993).

Students are exposed to a range of experiments thatcover from the basics of polymer science to polymer re-cycling. Students observe the rate of change in garbagethat is buried, which leads to inquiries what happens togarbage that does not rot [Experiment 1—Why Recycle?Degradation Experiment: developed by the Akron GlobalPolymer Academy (agpa.uakron.edu/k12)]. Students thenlearn the concept that certain types of garbage decom-pose quickly, while others do not. Specifically, over theincubation period of their landfills, students observe thatmetals, such as aluminum cans, and plastics do not de-compose. A discussion of the volume plastics take up inlandfills leads to a discussion of the importance of recy-cling plastics. At this point, the different types of com-mon plastics (Table 1) are discussed, and students aresent on scavenger hunts. In order to recycle plastics, anunderstanding of what polymers are and how they arefabricated, used, purified, and separated, is essential. Stu-dents are familiarized with the vocabulary of polymersynthesis through the making of models [Experiment 2—What is a polymer? The Crunch and Munch Lab: thesource of this experiment is the Material Science andTechnology Teacher’s Workshop, developed by the De-partment of Materials Science and Engineering at theUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (matse1.mse.uiuc.edu/�tw/polymers/d.html)].

Experiments related to polymer characteristics thenfollow in order to teach students potential methods to sep-arate recycled polymers. The polymer characteristics in-vestigated include:

1. Experiment 3—Polymer properties: glass transitiontemperature [developed by the National ScienceFoundation/Washington State University EngineeringInstitute (www.che.wsu.edu/home/modules/96mod-ules/Z)]. When a plastic object is left outside duringthe winter, it cracks more easily in the summer time;this is something that happens to polymers, and is oneof the characteristics that make polymers unique,which is called glass transition temperature. There isa certain polymer-specific temperature that when thepolymer is cooled below this temperature, it becomeshard and brittle, like glass. Hard plastics are used be-low their glass transition temperatures; that is in theirglassy state, while rubber is used above its glass tran-sition temperature, that is, in the rubbery state, whereit is soft and flexible.

2. Experiment 4—Polymer properties: density [source:Material Science and Technology Teacher’s Work-

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Table 1. Introduction to plastic recycling (American Plastics Council).

AfterName Symbol Chemical structure Characteristics Before recycling

Polyethylene Clarity, strength, Peanut Sweatshirtterephthalate barrier to gas, butter jar

resistance togrease/oil,resistance toheat

High-density Stiffness, Milk jug Fencepolyethylene strength, low

cost, ease offorming,resistance tochemicals,permeabilityto gas, easeof processing

Polyvinyl Versatility, ease Sandwich Playgroundchloride of blending, box equipment

strength,resistance togrease/oil,resistance tochemicals,clarity, lowcost

Low-density Ease of Bread bag Trash canpolyethylene processing,

barrier to moisture,stength,flexibility,ease ofsealing, lowcost

Polypropelene Strength, Ketchup Broomsresistance to bottle andchemicals, brushesresistance toheat, barrierto moisture,low cost,versatility,ease ofprocessing, resistance togrease/oil

Polystyrene Versatility, Foam cup Insulatedinsulation, jacketease ofprocessing,low cost,clarity

shop, developed by the Department of Materials Sci-ence and Engineering at the University of Illinois Ur-bana–Champaign (matse1.mse.uiuc.edu/�tw/polymers/d.html)]. In order to recycle a large number of differ-ent items it is important to sort these materials. Thepurpose of these experiments is to use polymer den-sity to identify three mystery plastics.

The last experiment involves having the students makeglue from the biopolymer casein (source: AmericanChemical Society Chemical Activities Teachers Edition,by Borgford and Summerlin, 1988). White glue can beoften made from a protein in milk called casein. (This isthe historical reason for the picture of a cow on somecontainers of Elmer’s Glue®.) The casein is separatedfrom the milk by processes called coagulation and pre-cipitation. At the factory, the casein is dried and groundup before it is made into glue. Casein is also used alongwith some paints and to make a type of plastic-like but-ton. In this experiment students recover casein from skimmilk and make glue.

EVALUATION AND DISCUSSION OF ETMS IMPACTS

Formative and summative research methods were usedto determine project strengths, weaknesses, and partici-pant outcomes.

For teacher participants

1. To measure the increase in breadth and depth of con-tent knowledge in math/science: pre- and posttestswere utilized for each topic.

2. To measure the skill demonstrated in utilizing the engineering/physics/astronomy applications ofmath/science content: staff assessed lesson plansand observed the participants teaching during thesecond course and provided a statement regardingthe strength of the applications in illustrating math/science content.

3. To measure the understanding of the interdependenceof mathematics and science content: staff assessed les-son plans and observed the participants teaching dur-

ing the second course and provided a statement re-garding participants illustrating the interdependenceof math/science content.

4. To measure the gain in confidence in ability to usehands-on applications of math/science content: staffobserved the participants teaching during the secondcourse and provided a statement regarding partici-pants’ confidence in utilizing hands-on engineer-ing/physics/astronomy applications of math/sciencecontent.

For the professional staff and programadministrators, and the project in general

To measure the effectiveness of the access to gradu-ate level courses that present hands-on practical appli-cations of math and science, for teachers locatedthroughout Ohio, a questionnaire was provided to theparticipants, staff, and administrators. It solicited re-sponses concerning the effectiveness of the arrange-ments for classroom and laboratory activities. A ques-tionnaire was provided to the participants to assess theeffectiveness of individual staff members regardingclassroom and laboratory instruction in the several top-ics of the course.

The evaluation results indicated that for the 2001 par-ticipants, 93% learned new concepts which could betaken back to their classrooms, 90% learned new in-structional approaches, and 75% participated in hands-onactivities that could be used in their classrooms. Severalteachers have stated that they have changed some of theirteaching methods by often asking themselves “What canI have the students build to illustrate this concept.”

For migrant student participants

In order to determine the value of ETMS, direct as-sessment of students from participating schools was com-pared to students in traditional programs. We assessedstudent understanding at several stages of the course, in-cluding an assessment of student understanding of pre-requisite material at the beginning of the course, a seriesof exams during the course, and a final at the course con-clusion. We evaluated understanding through standardwritten items, student artifacts, and student interviews.

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Table 2. Changes in final grades for first cohort of students as they progressed fromseventh grade (2000–2001) to eighth grade (2001–2002).

Below 70% Between 70–80% Above 80%

Math Decreased by 20% Increased by 16% Increased by 4%English Decreased by 23% Increased by 15% Increased by 8%

These assessments were used to inform instruction andto provide students with feedback, in addition to supply-ing student achievement data for this project. We main-tained control groups of students traditional schools, whocompleted identical exams as the ETMS groups. Poten-tial sources of bias and error in the measurements mayinclude the community, school districts, society, admin-istrative support, community involvement, learning en-vironment, teacher preparation, facilities, and instruc-tional materials.

Through ETMS, over 240 in-service teachers havebeen exposed to hands-on engineering applications ofmath/science concepts typically taught in 6th–12th grade.These teachers then have utilized these engineering ap-plications in their classrooms during the academic year.In this manner, over 53,000 secondary students have beenexposed to practical everyday engineering applications ofthe math/science concepts that they study. This assumesthat each teacher has four to five classes per day with20–25 students per class. Thus, each teacher impacts ap-proximately 100 students, daily. Summer junior highschool institutes at UT and at the Sophia Quintero His-panic Art and Cultural Center (innercity of Toledo) in-cluded 60 students in 2001 and another 60 students in2002. Summer migrant education schools (in Delta, Leip-sic, Gibsonburg, Woodville, Lakota, Fremont/Vanguard,Painesville, Bettsville) involved 170 students in 2001 and230 students in 2002.

Improvements in grades were observed for participantscompared to nonparticipants. The grades of a randomsample of migrant students from participating schoolswere compared to a random sample (of equal number ofstudents) from a nonparticipant school in order to mini-mize bias. The data in Table 2 shows the improvementfor the first cohort of participants as they progressed fromseventh to eighth grade.

Through both academic year and summer programs,professional and preservice teachers are trained in the useof environmental experiments to integrate mathematicsand science in their classroom teaching. ETMS en-courages communities of teachers to build networks andcooperative learning groups to develop and implement in-quiry and research-based hands-on environmental engi-neering classroom experiments. To infuse future man-ufacturing industries with environmental practices, students’ imaginations must be stretched with fun hands-on activities. Through these, ETMS aims at having mi-grant students to consider taking 4 years of math and 4years of laboratory science in high school as they see mathand science as integral portions of daily life. This long-term goal of ETMS is supported by assessment/evalua-tion materials to date.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The ETMS program of courses, summer camps, andafter-school projects was supported by a grant under thefederally funded Improving Teacher Quality Program,administered by the Ohio Board of Regents by the OhioMigrant Education Center, and by the Ohio Space GrantConsortium, and by a grant under the Ohio Departmentof Education, Migrant Education Program.

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Engineering for Teachers of Migrant Students (ETMS)