Identifying Indicators Related to Constructs for Engineering Design Outcome

Abstract

With the publication of standards for teaching, learning, and the inculcation of technological literacy (International Technology Education Association, 2000), technology education in the United States has made a significant leap forward toward greater acceptance as a valid school subject. Standards represent content terrain claimed by a community of practitioners, and once stakes are put down, it is left to adherents to move in seeking title. It is doubtful whether we will witness a rush towards biotechnology or medical technology, new areas in the standards that do not naturally issue from our accustomed traditions. But for design there will be great interest since this is a content area over which the field has long toiled. Design is arguably the single most important content category set forth in the standards, because it is a concept that situates the subject more completely within the domain of engineering. Four of the 20 standards address the question of design directly. Standard 8 deals with the "attributes of design;" Standard 9 with "engineering design;" Standard 10 with "trouble shooting, research and development, invention and innovation, and experiment in problem solving; and Standard 11 with the "design process." It is not inconsequential that the foreword heralding the standards is authored by William Wulf, in his capacity as President of the National Academy of Engineering. This is a significant benediction for a subject whose advocates have for the past decade or so been of the view that its acceptance by the public and by the dominant academic culture of schools turned on the degree of rapprochement that could be worked out with the science as well as the engineering communities. The Project 2061 curriculum standards acknowledged the common epistemological ground shared by science and technology as school subjects, embodied in the designed world (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993; Johnson, 1989). With ties with science thus formalized, engineering was but a step away. The sentiments expressed by Bensen & Bensen (1993) foreshadowed what appears now to be a significant opportunity for the field of technology education to lay claim to aspects of engineering as part of its curriculum purview. Arguing that the subject should

Positioning the T and E in STEM: A STL Analytical Content Review of Engineering and Technology Education Research

“…In JTE, five articles were examined, and Design as a domain was noted five times. Wilhelmsen and Dixon (2016) investigated "engineering design constructs identified by Childress and Rhodes (2008)" and concluded that "more questions still need to be answered. For example, can an instrument be developed from the indicators that validly and reliably assesses students' outcomes in design?…”

Research Evidence of the Impact of Engineering Design on Technology and Engineering Education Students

“…Within the technology education classroom over the past decade or so, engineering education in general and, more specifically, engineering design have been offered as keys to improving teaching and learning (Daugherty & Custer, 2012;Denson & Lammi, 2014;Lewis, 2005;Wicklein, 2006;Wilhelmsen & Dixon, 2016). This is reflected by both the Standards for Technological Literacy (STL) including engineering design in its standards (International Technology Education Association [ITEA], 2007) and the International Technology and Engineering Education Association, the professional association for the discipline, including engineering in its name.…”