Reasoning Strategies in the Context of Engineering Design with Everyday Materials

Abstract

Abstract''Making'' represents an increasingly popular label for describing a form of engineering design. While making is growing in popularity, there are still open questions about the strategies that students are using in these activities. Assessing and improving learning in making/ engineering design contexts require that we have a better understanding of where students' ideas are coming from and a better way to characterize student progress in open-ended learning environments. In this article, we use a qualitative analysis of students' responses (N 5 13) in order to identify the origins of their ideas. Four strategies emerged from this analysis: unexplained reasoning; materials-based reasoning; example-based reasoning; and principle-based reasoning. We examine key characteristics of each strategy and how each strategy relates to learning and expertise through in-depth case studies. Furthermore, we identify how these four strategies are a complement to prior work on analogical problem solving and creativity, and offer a number of unique contributions that are particularly relevant for engineering education. Finally, we include two coding schemes that can be used to classify students' responses. Studying reasoning strategies in this way is a fruitful means for characterizing student learning in complex learning environments. Moreover, understanding reasoning strategies impacts the nature of student-teacher discussions and informs how to help students progress most effectively.

Assessment of Creativity in K‐12 Education: A Scoping Review

“…With the objective of assessing and improving learning in engineering design contexts, Worsley and Blikstein () conducted a qualitative study to better understand where students’ ideas come from and how to assess their progress in open‐ended learning environments that require creativity. They challenged 13 American students (10 from Grades 9‐12 and three post‐secondary) with an engineering design task.…”

“…Eight studies amongst those reviewed here focused on frameworks to support and assess creativity. Five of these studies were conducted in order to develop frameworks (e.g., Pelczer & Rodríguez, ; Tan et al, ; Wang et al, ; Nielsen, ; Worsley & Blikstein, ) while three of the studies (Lindström, ; Ellis & Lawrence, ; Lucas, ) tested frameworks in school contexts, with findings identifying their effectiveness, and further emphasising the value of clearly articulated conceptions of creativity (i.e., through frameworks or assessment criteria) to support meaningful and useful assessment of creativity in K‐12 classroom contexts.…”

Exploring ideation strategies as an opportunity to support and evaluate making

“…The two studies in this paper are informed by Worsley and Blikstein (2017), who described four non-mutually exclusive reasoning strategies that students use when generating solutions to engineering design challenges. These reasoning strategies include unexplained reasoning, materials-based reasoning, example-based reasoning and principle-based reasoning.…”

“…A primary contribution of this paper is to compare two general purpose ways to support making (i.e. examples-based prompts and principle-based prompts (Worsley and Blikstein, 2017) that are applicable for both undergraduate and high school students. The analyses presented in this paper are drawn from a pair of studies where high school and undergraduate students worked in pairs to complete an engineering design task.…”

Zooming into a Tinkering Project: The Progression of Learning through Transitional Objects

“…In his next design phase, Kiernan was inspired by Zoe's project. He shifted from a process largely dependent on materials-based reasoning to a more example-based reasoning approach (Worsley & Blikstein, 2016). For another person, Zoe's flag-waving Orangeade figure might seem to have little relevance to the design of a flying dinosaur, but for Kiernan, it prompted a spontaneous insight into the mechanics of flapping wings.…”