Cognitive Research: Transferring Theories and Findings to K-12 Engineering Educational Practice

Abstract

Engineering design is increasingly viewed as highly beneficial to K-12 education. As a result, engineering continues to be implemented in technology and engineering education classrooms alongside the recent inclusion of engineering within the Next Generation Science Standards. In turn, use of engineering has raised a number of concerns as to what the true intent is and how research can be used for K-12 educational practice. One concern is the identification of engineering content for grades K-12 and how it aligns with professional engineering preparation. Secondly, how can the growing body of engineering design cognition research be used to impact student learning outcomes. As cognitive research in K-12 engineering is being conducted more frequently, it is important to examine the methodologies used, distinguish the proper coding schemes, and develop ways in which the findings of these studies guide educators in the planning of instruction and designing of curricula. Consequently, the article focuses on the influx of K-12 design cognition research related to engineering design. The outcome of this paper is to ground K-12 engineering design cognition research, by making connections with goals of K-12 education.

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“…Taxonomies have been derived from the actions of design practitioners, design process models presented in design curriculum, analyses of engineering textbooks, or cognitive science frameworks. Grubbs and Strimel (2016) categorized these taxonomies based on their foundations as either a general design process, practitioner design process, or cognitive science taxonomy of design. Examination of design cognition studies conducted between 1996 and 2016 revealed eight different taxonomies used to define the cognitive tasks associated with design work (Grubbs, Strimel, & Kim, 2018;.…”

Naïve Designers’ Information Use during the Design Process in a Low-Resource Classroom

“…Designing as a cognitive activity is seen as a prime example of ill-structured problem solving (Goldschmidt & Rodgers, 2013;Grubbs & Strimel, 2016;Jonassen, 2011). Since the late 1960s, there have been many developments in understanding how designers solve ill-structured problems.…”

“…Second, this knowledge might help curriculum developers and teachers to design learning environments that are conducive to complex thinking that mirrors that of expert designers (De Vries, 2016;Haupt, 2015;Oxman, 2001). Third, viewing the design cognition of secondary learners through extended information processing contributes to the limited theories of cognition specific to Technology education (Grubbs & Strimel, 2016;Petrina, 2010).…”