Tamara J. Moore

Tamara J. Moore
Purdue University West Lafayette | Purdue · School of Engineering Education

Ph.D.

About

216
Publications
55,848
Reads
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6,581
Citations
Additional affiliations
August 2013 - present
Purdue University West Lafayette
Position
  • Professor (Full)
August 2006 - August 2013
University of Minnesota
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
Education
August 2003 - August 2008
Purdue University West Lafayette
Field of study
  • Interdisciplinary Engineering
August 2003 - August 2006
Purdue University West Lafayette
Field of study
  • Engineering Education
May 1999 - August 2001
Purdue University West Lafayette
Field of study
  • Mathematics Education

Publications

Publications (216)
Article
Background EngineeringFaculty members should adopt effective pedagogical approaches in order to maximize student learning. The beliefs of faculty members about instructional practice are an important construct in determining what and how they teach.PurposeThis study investigates the effect of faculty members’ involvement in model-eliciting activiti...
Article
Full-text available
Recent U.S. national documents have laid the foundation for highlighting the connection between science, technology, engineering and mathematics at the K-12 level. However, there is not a clear definition or a well-established tradition of what constitutes a quality engineering education at the K-12 level. The purpose of the current work has been t...
Article
Recent documents pertaining to K-12 education have fostered a connection between engineering and science education to help better prepare our students and future citizens to better meet the current and future challenges of our modern and technological society. With that connection, there has been a concerted effort to raise the visibility of engine...
Article
Background Modeling abilities play an important role in engineering. The creation and use of representations is a central aspect of modeling, and students who are learning to model often use a variety of representations to express, test, revise, and communicate their own thinking. Consequently, model development often depends on representational fl...
Conference Paper
SCALE K-12 is part of a workforce development project that has been funded in response to the need to develop an industry-ready workforce as the U.S. brings microchip manufacturing back within the country’s borders in order provide a supply of trusted and assured ME. SCALE K-12 works with targeted school districts in Indiana and Illinois to impleme...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In response to the growing need to foster microchip literacy among K-12 students and the CHIPS and Science Act, educational institutions and educators are exploring innovative ways to introduce young learners to the world of microelectronics. This creates an opportunity to develop design projects that not only nurture students' interest but also eq...
Article
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Within the field of K-2 CS education, unplugged computational thinking (CT) activities have been suggested as beneficial for younger students and shown to impact young students’ skills and motivation to learn about CS. This study sought to examine how children demonstrate CT competencies in unplugged sequencing tasks and how children use manipulati...
Article
The design of biological systems is a multidisciplinary activity in which biomedical engineers collaborate to build novel biological systems that address society’s needs. One of the most relevant skills for designing biological systems is engineering systems thinking (EST). Among the EST elements, the EST cognitive competencies are comparatively le...
Article
Full-text available
This study aimed to develop a K-12 classroom observation protocol to assess K-12 teachers’ implementation of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) integration. The intended purpose of the observation protocol is for researchers to examine how K-12 teachers implement the STEM integrated curriculum. Based on research on STEM integr...
Article
Big data analytics has grown as a valuable tool for professionals from different fields to get insights from large volumes of data and make data-driven decisions. Given this, engineering students need access to learning environments that support learning data analytics. These activities should teach students the skills to assess data, design high-q...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition is a worldwide synthetic biology event where pre-college and college students design, build and test biological systems to address societal needs. Designing a biological system requires a good development of engineering systems thinking, especially due to living organisms' complex...
Article
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Recent reforms in science education have supported the inclusion of engineering and their practices in K-12 curricula. To this end, many classrooms have incorporated engineering units that include design challenges. Design is an integral part of engineering and can help students think in creative and interdisciplinary ways. In this study, we examin...
Article
Full-text available
To promote rich discourse around scientific and engineering practices, teachers may turn to engineering design-based science curricula; however, this has discursive demands which have yet to be examined in a unit focused on integration of engineering and science. To investigate these discursive demands, we expand on the definition of discourse to i...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Virtual laboratories are valuable resources to support students' learning in engineering and science. They allow students to perform experiments with minimum resources, be prepared for other hands-on activities or lectures, and better understand the conceptual knowledge of the discipline. Due to those benefits, the School of Aeronautics and Astrona...
Article
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Recent science education reforms highlight the importance for teachers to implement effective instructional practices that promote student learning of science and engineering content and their practices. Effective classroom discussion has been shown to support the learning of science, but work is needed to examine teachers’ enactment of engineering...
Article
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Computational thinking requires high cognitive load as students work to manage multiple tasks in their problem-solving environment. Through research in K-2 classrooms on computational thinking, we noticed that students lack the representational fluency needed to move from one form to another—such as moving from physical to more abstract representat...
Article
Engineering design‐based STEM integration is one potential model to help students integrate content and practices from all of the STEM disciplines. In this study, we explored the intersection of two aspects of pre‐college STEM education: the integration of the STEM disciplines, and the NGSS practice of engaging in argument from evidence within engi...
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Full-text available
Background Integration of engineering into middle school science and mathematics classrooms is a key aspect of STEM integration. However, successful pedagogies for teachers to use engineering talk in their classrooms are not fully understood. Purpose/Hypothesis This study aims to address this need with the research question: How does a middle scho...
Article
A theoretical model of metacognition in complex modeling activities has been developed based on existing frameworks, by synthesizing the reconceptualization of metacognition at multiple levels by looking at the three sources that trigger metacognition. Using the theoretical model as a framework, this multiple-case study explores students’ spontaneo...
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Full-text available
Recent reforms in education call for science teachers to incorporate STEM concepts into their curricula. This study explores the association among student and teacher demographics, and student learning of engineering content and attitudes towards STEM after participation in an elementary or middle school engineering-based science curricula. Analysi...
Article
This study of a state‐funded, 3‐year implementation of an integrated STEM professional development (PD) program for teachers from two middle schools in the midwestern U.S. examined if participants in the PD were enabled to transform their practice and perceptions of STEM. An integrated STEM approach includes a focus on the STEM disciplines, along w...
Article
Teacher professional development for mathematics teachers is critical to improving teacher quality and student achievement. This study clarifies nine core features for effective professional development programs in mathematics education, based on previous research. These features are: (1) content focus, (2) active learning, (3) fostering coherence,...
Chapter
This chapter focuses on framing teaching practices that stem from a models and modeling perspective. Drawing on this perspective, we articulate how modeling is grounded in the dual notions that mathematics is learned through modeling and that the iterative process of designing products and processes is an approach to modeling that can be especially...
Chapter
Dieses Kapitel legt den Schwerpunkt auf Lehreraktivitäten, die aus einer Modellierungsperspektive stammen. Hierauf aufbauend legen wir dar, inwiefern sich Modellieren auf zwei Aspekte bezieht: zum einen dass Mathematik mittels Modellieren gelernt wird und zum anderen dass der schrittweise Prozess des Designs von Produkten und Prozessen ein Zugang z...
Article
Full-text available
Quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) experiences during the early years provide young learners with a critical foundation for future learning and development. Engineering design is a context that can be used to facilitate connections and learning across STEM, however there is limited research examining the use of enginee...
Article
Although engineering design is dependent upon the use of science and mathematics, the actual prototype, model, or solution that pre-college students generate can be accomplished without the students explicitly using scientific or mathematical concepts. It is therefore important to explore how students apply science and mathematics concepts when eng...
Article
Assessment of students' critical thinking and problem solving in engineering is a real challenge for classroom teachers and researchers. Yet, students demonstrate evidence of learning through multiple means, including written reflections. The purpose of this study was to explore how students in grades 5 and 7 reflect on what they had learned about...
Chapter
The problems that we face in our ever-changing, increasingly global society are multidisciplinary, and many require the integration of multiple Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) concepts to solve them. These problems are the driving force behind national calls for more and stronger students in the pipeline to enter into STEM...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter explores engineering as it applies to students in the early grades. First, we consider engineering as a STEM foundation. We then address ways in which we can provide supportive learning environments for early engineering learning. As part of such environments, we examine how we can build on intrinsically interesting problems. In explor...
Chapter
The PictureSTEM project consists of instructional units for grades K-2 that employ engineering and literacy contexts to integrate science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computational thinking (STEM+C) content instruction in meaningful and significant ways. The PictureSTEM project utilizes picture books and an engineering design challeng...
Chapter
As an integrative and broad field, engineering incorporates many aspects of science, technology, and mathematics fields as well as social sciences. Engineers are often required to develop solutions to design problems in novel situations, with incomplete information and competing criteria. Design, one of the facets of engineering, is a process of ma...
Book
This book addresses engineering learning in early childhood, spanning ages 3 to 8 years. It explores why engineering experiences are important in young children's overall development and how engineering is a core component of early STEM learning, including how engineering education links and supports children's existing experiences in science, math...
Article
Full-text available
Research-based frameworks can help K-12 schools develop integrated STEM curricula. Two frameworks are presented that describe the characteristics of effective integrated STEM lessons and effective engineering education. The second framework is a modification of the first. Modifications were made to align the framework to a school that was new to in...
Article
Full-text available
This study examined different approaches to integrating engineering practices in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum units. These various approaches were correlated with student outcomes on engineering assessment items. There are numerous reform documents in the USA and around the world that emphasize the need to inc...
Article
Full-text available
An understanding of statistics and skills in data analysis are becoming more and more essential, yet research consistently shows that students struggle with these concepts at all levels. This case study documents some of the struggles four groups of fifth-grade students encounter as they collect, organize, and interpret data and then ultimately att...
Article
One of the fundamental practices identified in Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is argumentation, which has been researched in P-12 science education for the previous two decades but has yet to be studied within the context of P-12 engineering education. This research explores how elementary and middle school science teachers incorporated a...