Teaching

Philosophy

As an international education researcher, I know that there are myriad learning environments around the world.  My objective as a teacher is to use an empirical perspective and problem-based learning activities to support students’ study of engineering learning settings around the world.  I do this in courses such as research design, basic and advanced statistical methods, and education and technology. My classroom is a conversation. I help students identify the comparative knowledge, research design and analysis skills, and critical thinking and justice-oriented attitudes they require to reach their individual goals for education research and practice.  More specifically, for undergraduate students, my broad learning goal is to provide a sociological and cognitive perspective of how engineering education works in numerous contexts and via different technologies; for masters students, my goal is to prepare them to critically evaluate programs that are situated in a given learning context; and, for doctoral students, my goal is to prepare them to explore and generate new insights into the complex relationship between technological, social, economic, and cultural factors and learning.

IMplementation & Experimentation

Research findings from the DeBoer lab are implemented immediately in Dr. DeBoers sections of Purdue's ENGR131 First Year Engineering course. Effectiveness of classroom implementation is measured both quantitatively and qualitatively. The data from these experiments guides the research of the DeBoer Lab.  In this way, Teaching and Research work synergystically in a recursive cycle.