The primary goal of engineering education is to prepare students to work as productive engineers in society. This preparation traditionally focuses on developing students' discipline related technical and analytical knowledge, skills, and abilities. However, recent initiatives to develop a more holistic engineer have shed light on an aspect of engineering education that is largely lacking-the development of essential nontechnical knowledge, skills and abilities. In this paper, we propose a framework for considering the people part of engineering to organize these other kinds of knowledge, skills, and abilities that need to be addressed in engineering education.Informed by scholarly literature on development and learning, the framework presented in this work argues for people as central to engineering. We offer a framework on engineering for, with, and as people. Engineering for people requires a sense of the influences, constraints, and criteria people impose on the design and development of engineering solutions. Engineering with people emphasizes working collaboratively with a diverse group of people. Engineering as a person has one recognize the values, beliefs, knowledge, and skills driving the development of engineered solutions. We present examples of pedagogical strategies to integrate the various "people" skills into engineering courses and programs.
Traditional precollege formal education includes state and federal mandated science and mathematics content. Most recently standards also include engineering content to support initiatives that. prepare more of the American population for the engineering challenges of the future. This study focused on a precollege engineering education intervention. Potential interactions between student and school level factors and students' pre-test achievement were explored using a multilevel modeling data analysis approach (i.e. investigating students within schools). Findings suggest that the statistically significant predictors of the students' pre-test scores are school socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Students who attended a school with a higher proportion of students on free and reduced lunch (FRL) -where FRL is used as a measure of socio-economic status -on average have lower scores than those who attend schools with a lower proportion of FRL receiving students. The second finding is that on average, African American and Hispanic students earn fewer points on the pre-test than do students belonging to other ethnic groups. The findings further suggest that family and community knowledge can influence student knowledge and test scores. As engineering education researchers and practitioners, we must apply these insights to the ways that we engage with diverse students and to the design of our curricula.
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