Failure and Improvement in Elementary Engineering

Abstract

Recent science education reform documents in the United States have called for teachers to teach content related to engineering and science and to do so by engaging students in disciplinary practices. One important practice of engineering is improving from failure. Thus, students should experience productive failure as part of engineering design activities. However, engineering is a new subject for most elementary teachers. Historically failure has had negative connotations in elementary and precollege classrooms. To scaffold students through failure as they learn from and improve engineering designs, teachers will need to understand failure and pedagogical strategies for managing it. This study uses discourse analysis of video from eight elementary classes engaged in engineering to examine the nature of failure in engineering design projects. It also investigates how the collective actions of students and teachers support or constrain the process of improvement from engineering design failure. From these data, we propose a model of improvement through failure. This includes a classification of types and causes failure as well as facilitating conditions that must be present for improvement. We explore three features of engineering and three features of classroom cultures that contribute to learning to engage in productive failure.

Epistemic conflict and sensemaking in elementary students' navigation of an engineering design task

“…However, in this case study we also saw instances where students probably would have benefited from more adult support for sensemaking in service of design decision‐making. Students often need support from teachers to learn from failures as they test and revise design prototypes (Johnson et al, 2021; Lottero‐Perdue & Parry, 2017). Our study suggests that revising a prototype based on test results may not always lend itself to obvious learning.…”

Examining interactions between dominant discourses and engineering educational concepts in teachers' pedagogical reasoning

“…In exploring teachers' pedagogical reasoning, one set of tools we focus on is key concepts in K–12 engineering education—the targeted objectives, design practices, curricular features, and learning outcomes articulated in K–12 engineering education policy and research documents (Crismond & Adams, 2012; Cunningham & Kelly, 2017; National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2021; Next Generation Science Standards [NGSS] Lead States, 2013). These tools include frameworks detailing engineering design processes and strategies (Crismond & Adams, 2012), design problem‐based learning (English & King, 2017), epistemic practices of engineering (Cunningham & Kelly, 2017), and/or disciplinary values, such as learning from failure (Johnson et al, 2021; Lottero‐Perdue & Parry, 2017), human‐centered design (Hynes & Swenson, 2013), and socio‐ethical perspectives (Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018).…”

A Balancing Act: Elementary Teachers and their Students Balancing Trade-offs in Engineering Design Projects (Fundamental)

“…Interactional ethnography (IE) is an approach to studying cultures-in-the making, borrowing from research and philosophical traditions like sociolinguistics, cultural anthropology, and ethnomethodology [6]. Important to analyses in IE are the ways that social groups use talk, action, texts, and signs and symbols to construct the reality within social groups [5]. It is a useful way to better understand students and teachers during engineering design projects in classrooms because it is generally done in small groups, relies on talk and action focused on several design artifacts that becomes a character in the group.…”

“…Photos provided by the participants led to discussions about why it was an example of technology and how effective it might be to use as examples with their students [23]. Then, using the engineering design project from Day 1 as well as classroom video, teachers identified and discussed the different types of failure and their consequences [5]. They also used an analytic rubric [6] to quantitatively assess improvement and reflected on the needs to use this approach in the classroom.…”

“…A review of the literature identified sixteen practices of engineers that were both unique to engineering and relevant to K-12 teaching [4]. Of particular interest to our group has been persisting and improving from failure [5], assessing implication of solutions, and building and using models [6]. Recently, we have become particularly interested in the ways groups of students and teachers approach balancing tradeoffs between criteria and constraints in multi-objective problems [33].…”