Stable Beginnings in Engineering Design

Abstract

Novel Engineering activities are premised on the integration of engineering and literacy: students identify and engineer solutions to problems that arise for fictional characters in stories they read for class. There are advantages to this integration, for both engineering and literacy goals of instruction: the stories provide ''clients'' to support students' engagement in engineering, and understanding clients' needs involves careful interpretation of text. Outcomes are encouraging, but mixed, in part owing to variation in how students frame the task. For instance, although students often pay close attention to the stories, interpreting and anticipating their fictional clients' needs, they sometimes focus more on the teacher and what they think she would like to see. This variation occurs both within and across groups of students, and it motivates studying the dynamics of student framing. Here, we examine a pair of students who share a central objective of designing an optimal solution for their fictional client, and who persist in achieving their objective. We argue that the students' stable framing of the activity involves their engagement in engineering design, and that the abilities they demonstrate in pursuit of a solution are evidence of their productive beginnings in engineering design. AbstractNovel Engineering activities are premised on the integration of engineering and literacy: students identify and engineer solutions to problems that arise for fictional characters in stories they read for class. There are advantages to this integration, for both engineering and literacy goals of instruction: the stories provide ''clients'' to support students' engagement in engineering, and understanding clients' needs involves careful interpretation of text. Outcomes are encouraging, but mixed, in part owing to variation in how students frame the task. For instance, although students often pay close attention to the stories, interpreting and anticipating their fictional clients' needs, they sometimes focus more on the teacher and what they think she would like to see. This variation occurs both within and across groups of students, and it motivates studying the dynamics of student framing. Here, we examine a pair of students who share a central objective of designing an optimal solution for their fictional client, and who persist in achieving their objective. We argue that the students' stable framing of the activity involves their engagement in engineering design, and that the abilities they demonstrate in pursuit of a solution are evidence of their productive beginnings in engineering design.

Data‐based conjectures for supporting responsive teaching in engineering design with elementary teachers

“…Students then worked in groups of two to three to sketch their initial designs. As the students brainstormed solutions, they scoped other criteria and constraints (McCormick & Hammer, ). Several groups attended to what Shiloh might need or want in the dog pen, setting the dog's comfort as an implicit criterion.…”

“…Students then worked in groups of two to three to sketch their initial designs. As the students brainstormed solutions, they scoped other criteria and constraints (McCormick & Hammer, 2016 Although the students had rich and complex ideas about the design problem, drawing from the story context and their own experiences, there was no evidence Ms. Andrea noticed these. She focused instead on continuing along the design process and making sure students fulfilled the initial design requirements.…”

Problematizing as a scientific endeavor

“…Recent accounts consider the role of students' "framing" what they are doing in engineering design to understand how they engage in disciplinary activities [52,53]. For example, in Ref.…”

Epistemological framing and novice elementary teachers' approaches to learning and teaching engineering design

“…At the elementary level, numerous resources now exist for teaching stand-alone engineering units (e.g., Cunningham, 2009;Dalvi, Wendell, & Johnson, 2016;Smithsonian Science Education Center, 2018) as well as integrated science and engineering curricula (e.g., Delta Education, 2018;Eichinger, Doherty, Lehman, & Merwade, 2013;Ryan, Gale, & Usselman, 2017). Recent research literature provides windows into elementary students' engineering design practices (McCormick & Hammer, 2016;McFadden & Roehrig, 2018;Watkins, Spencer, & Hammer, 2014), navigation of social dynamics (Jordan & McDaniel, 2014), and science reasoning for design problem solving (King & English, 2016).…”