Engineering-Based Problem Solving in the Middle School: Design and Construction with Simple Machines

Abstract

Incorporating engineering concepts into middle school curriculum is seen as an effective way to improve students' problem-solving skills. A selection of findings is reported from a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-based unit in which students in the second year (grade 8) of a three-year longitudinal study explored engineering concepts and principles pertaining to the functioning of simple machines. The culminating activity, the focus of this paper, required the students to design, construct, test, and evaluate a trebuchet catapult. We consider findings from one of the schools, a co-educational school, where we traced the design process developments of four student groups from two classes. The students' descriptions and explanations of the simple machines used in their catapult design are examined, together with how they rated various aspects of their engineering designs. Included in the findings are students' understanding of how their simple machines were simulated by the resources supplied and how the machines interacted in forming a complex machine. An ability to link physical materials with abstract concepts and an awareness of design constraints on their constructions were apparent, although a desire to create a ''perfect'' catapult despite limitations in the physical materials rather than a prototype for testing concepts was evident. Feedback from teacher interviews added further insights into the students' developments as well as the teachers' professional learning. An evolving framework for introducing engineering education in the pre-secondary years is proposed.

Mathematical Modeling: A Bridge to STEM Education

“…The majority of the arguments related to the STEM education perspective are common with the ideas stated by the community of researchers studying on mathematical modeling in mathematics education such as the need for developing students' competencies needed in this technology-based information age (English et al, 2013;English & Mousoulides, 2011;Lesh & Zawojewski, 2007;Niss, Blum & Galbraith, 2007). Furthermore, the obstacles such as the difficulty of integration into the curriculum, lack of professional knowledge of teachers, lack of curricular sources are some of the common problems indicated in the STEM education and mathematical modeling literature (e.g., Blum, 2015;Breiner et al, 2012;Corlu et al, 2014;Kaiser & Maaβ, 2007;Oliveira & Barbosa, 2009).…”

“…Furthermore, mathematical modeling activities have been proposed as an instructional material for STEM education (e.g., English et al, 2013;English & Mousoulides, 2011;Roehrig et al, 2012). In this part, we will discuss the possible contributions of modeling activities to integrated STEM education by providing results from a study conducted by Delice and Kertil (2015).…”

“…This type of integration is a stance advocated by Corlu et al (2014) for STEM education in the Turkish context due to existing teacher resistance (probably due to their inadequate pedagogical content and integrated teaching knowledge) and rigidity and centralized nature of the Turkish curriculum. Yet, many researchers indicated that, particularly in mathematics classrooms, the context integration model of STEM education could be put into practice by using the modeling activities (e.g., English et al, 2013;English & Mousoulides, 2011;Hamilton, Lesh, Lester & Brilleslyper, 2008;Roehrig et al, 2012). In particular, Roehrig and others (2012) indicated that the modeleliciting activities introduced (Lesh & Doerr, 2003) can be used as context integration model of STEM education.…”

“…Lesh and others (2000) determined six principles that a good model-eliciting activity should have, which are reality principle, model construction principle, self-evaluation principle, model documentation principle, simple prototype principle, and model generalization principle. Model eliciting activities seems to be good examples of curricular materials for context integration model of STEM education (Roehrig et al, 2012), and they have been started to be used as engineering-based problem solving contents in various recent studies focusing on STEM education (e.g., English et al, 2013;English & Mousoulides, 2011;Hamilton et al, 2008;Moore & Hjalmarson, 2010).…”

“…For both perspectives, there are lots of controversial issues such as how to prepare teachers as implementers of integrated STEM education, how to develop and who will develop the curricular materials needed, and how to prepare and implement an integrated curriculum without changing the existing school organizational structures (Corlu, Capraro & Capraro, 2014). At this point, the literature and knowledge base of mathematical modeling in mathematics education have potentials to contribute to this emerging area (e.g., English, Hudson & Dawes, 2013;English & Mousoulides, 2011). The purpose of the current study is conducting a theoretical discussion on how the construct of mathematical modeling can contribute to the integrated STEM education.…”