Development and Impact of Teacher Social Capital in an Engineering Education Teacher Professional Development Program

Teacher social capital is a set of social interaction assets such as collegiality and collaboration that enable teachers to work with each other in groups to improve teaching and learning. This results in instructional improvement and student success in school reform. This study discusses how an engineering education teacher professional development program has developed an environment for long-term collegiality and collaboration among its teachers. Furthermore, the study presents an empirical evidence of the impact of teacher social capital on students’ engineering knowledge learning. Ninety teachers and 621 students are examined in this program. The participants are from fifteen elementary schools in one of the largest school districts in the United States. Lessons taken from this program will certainly help other educators who may want to follow or build upon what has already been done for future cyber-enabled teacher professional development in STEM education