Elementary School Engineering for Fictional Clients in Children’s Literature

Milto, Elissa; Wendell, Kristen B.; Watkins, Jessica; Hammer, David; Spencer, Kathleen; Portsmore, Merredith; Rogers, Chris

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-16399-4_11

Cited by 11 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Both episodes took place during units designed and facilitated as part of the Novel Engineering research program 53 , an instructional approach to teaching engineering design in which design challenges are based on classroom literature, such as stories, novels, and nonfiction texts. The characters in the book become the students' clients, and the students build prototypes to solve problems faced by the characters.…”

Section: Methods: Examining Episodes Of Our Own Teachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This episode came from my interactions with a pair of fifth-grade girls, Caroline and Amelia, who were designing a shelter that could stay cool in the sun. This project was a part of a Novel Engineering unit 53 around The Swiss Family Robinson. Their class had read an excerpt from the book about how the stranded family first built a shelter on the beach, which got too hot in the sun.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Noticing, Assessing, and Responding to Students' Engineering: Exploring a Responsive Teaching Approach to Engineering Design

Wendell

Watkins

Johnson

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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This research paper examines formative assessment in engineering design, unpacking the disciplinary substance that instructors must attend to in their teaching. Borrowing the framework of responsive teaching from the math and science education literature, we argue for the importance of closely examining the many moment-to-moment assessments and decisions that engineering teachers encounter. Responsive teaching is an instructional approach in which instructors base their pedagogical moves on what their students are saying and doing. Instead of predetermining what will happen in classrooms, teachers elicit students' ideas, interpret and assess disciplinary aspects of students' reasoning, and respond with pedagogical decisions based on their interpretations.Responsive teaching has the potential to be a particularly useful approach for teaching engineering design: As students adapt to new criteria and constraints when solving ill-defined engineering design problems, teachers need to be responsive to their changing needs. However, most of the work on responsive teaching has occurred in math and science education.In this paper, we follow in the tradition of math and science education researchers who use their own teaching episodes as the basis for scholarly research on responsive teaching. Using microanalytic analysis, we examined two video-recorded cases from our engineering teaching at both the elementary and university level to explore how different yet equally legitimate disciplinary goals can conflict with each other and produce "instructional tensions" for the teacher. We used purposeful sampling to select cases rich in opportunities to unpack student thinking in engineering. We present in-depth analyses of the tensions that emerged between different disciplinary goals in these STEM learning environments. These results point to the need for increased attention on how teachers manage the different disciplinary practices and goals in STEM activities, particularly when incorporating formative assessment strategies or adopting a responsive teaching approach.

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Section: Methods: Examining Episodes Of Our Own Teachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Noticing, Assessing, and Responding to Students' Engineering: Exploring a Responsive Teaching Approach to Engineering Design

Wendell

Watkins

Johnson

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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“…However, relatively few studies have examined engineering education at the elementary school age (Purzer, Strobel, & Cardella, 2014). In particular, elementary school engineering education in formal settings has been considered (Aguirre-Muñoz & Pantoya, 2016; Barth, 2013;Jordan & McDaniel, 2014;Koerber, Mayer, Osterhaus, Schwippert, & Sodian, 2015;Lachapelle & Cunningham, 2016;Milto, et al, 2016;Strawhacker, Sullivan, & Portsmore, 2016;Weber, Duncan, Dyehouse, Strobel, & Diefes-Dux, 2011;Wendell & Rogers, 2013;, while informal settings have also been examined (Dalvi & Wendell, 2015;Dorie, Cardella, & Svarovsky, 2015;Frey & Powers, 2012;Portsmore & Swenson, 2012).…”

Section: Engineering Education In Elementary Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latinx and Caucasian Elementary School Children’s Knowledge of and Interest in Engineering Activities

Özoğul

Miller²,

Reisslein³

2017

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

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Ethnic minorities, such as Latinx people of Hispanic or Latino origin, and women earn fewer engineering degrees than Caucasians and men. With shifting population dynamics and high demands for a technically qualified workforce, it is important to achieve broad participation in the engineering workforce by all ethnicities and both genders. Previous research has examined the knowledge of and interest in engineering among students in grades five and higher. In contrast, the present study examined elementary school students in grades K-5. The study found that older students in grades 4 and 5 had both greater knowledge of engineering occupational activities and greater interest in engineering than younger students in grades K-3. Moreover, Caucasian students had greater knowledge and interest levels than Latinx students. There were no significant differences between boys and girls, nor any significant interactions among gender, grade level, and ethnicity. A significant positive correlation between knowledge of engineering occupational activities and interest in engineering was also found. The findings suggest that early engineering outreach interventions are important. Such early interventions could potentially contribute to preserving the equivalent interest levels of males and females for engineering as students grow older. Also, ethnic disparities in engineering knowledge and interest could potentially be mitigated through early interventions.

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“…Positive shifts in interest have been observed internationally when incorporating engineering projects into secondary schools (Malone, Schuchardt and Schunn, 2018) and informal outreach programs to K12 schools (Johnson et al, 2013;Karp and Maloney, 2013;Shahali et al, 2017). The incorporation of engineering at the early elementary school level (students five to 10 years old) has included the use of engineering picture and trade books to introduce engineering challenges (Milto et al, 2016;Pantoya et al, 2015), engineering design projects (Lachapelle and Cunningham, 2014;Silver and Rushton, 2008b), and animated videos (Johnson et al, 2013). The lack of inclination to become an engineer may be caused by the negative stereotypical images held by students rather than enjoyment of science and engineering (Silver and Rushton, 2008a;Wang and Degol, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering Design Challenges in Early Childhood Education: Effects on Student Cognition and Interest

Malone

Tiarani

Irving

et al. 2018

European Journal of STEM Education

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This mixed methods study is one of the first to evaluate the effects of the incorporation of dramatic inquiry, dance, visual arts and physical education into preK-3 science, technology, engineering and mathematics units on student conceptual understanding of technology and engineering. The study used data collected from over 200 student surveys and focus group interviews with 14 teachers. The use of integrated STEAM units supported significant improvement in 4 to 8 year old students' understanding of engineering and technology. We report an average 55% increase in student understanding of what engineers do, and a 36% increase in their understanding of technology. The effect sizes for both assessments showed mostly large effects for all grade levels. The pre test scores across all grade levels were not significantly different. By implementing these integrated units with our younger students, we aimed to nurture their interest and understanding of engineering and technology across grade levels. This study results imply that students may not learn about these important topics outside of school hours; thus, it is important they become acquainted with these topics during school hours. Our work suggests that engineering units with dramatic inquiry should be introduced beginning in kindergarten.

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Elementary School Engineering for Fictional Clients in Children’s Literature

Cited by 11 publications

References 6 publications

Noticing, Assessing, and Responding to Students' Engineering: Exploring a Responsive Teaching Approach to Engineering Design

Noticing, Assessing, and Responding to Students' Engineering: Exploring a Responsive Teaching Approach to Engineering Design

Latinx and Caucasian Elementary School Children’s Knowledge of and Interest in Engineering Activities

Engineering Design Challenges in Early Childhood Education: Effects on Student Cognition and Interest

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