What is engineering? — An Exploration of P-6 grade teachers’ perspectives

Abstract

Age-appropriate authentic engineering problems offer educators opportunities to integrate math, science, and technology and foster higher-level learning. However, P-12 teachers typically do not have adequate access to or knowledge about engineering, which limits their ability to bring engineering into their classrooms. This study was conducted to document and analyze P-6 teachers' perceptions of engineering. As part of the pre-post assessment strategy for two different week-long INSPIRE Summer Academies (Local and National), teachers responded to two questions: "What is engineering?" and "What do engineers do?" Qualitative research methods were used to create coding schemes for the written responses to the two questions. Analysis resulted in the creation of seven main coding categories and twenty subcategories which were used to analyze teachers' responses. Findings indicate some significant differences between the two academies and changes in teachers' responses from pre to post-academy. This paper will articulate the methods used to analyze the responses and present findings from the pre and post teacher responses.

Refining an Instrument and Studying Elementary Teachers’ Understanding of the Scope of Engineering

“…and ''What do engineers do?'' Like the findings from the Draw-An-Engineer-Test, studies that used this approach have similarly found evidence of misconceptions about the SOE among elementary students and teachers (Cunningham et al, 2005(Cunningham et al, , 2006Lambert et al, 2007). Although these open-ended approaches have revealed some misconceptions about the SOE, a significant limitation of the instruments is that they were not specifically designed to elicit respondents' SOE thinking.…”

“…Another important set of ideas relates to the nature of engineering: what engineering is, what engineers do, and engineering's relationship with other disciplines and society (Cardella, Salzman, Purzer, & Strobel, 2014;Karatas, Micklos, & Bodner, 2011;Lachapelle & Cunningham, 2014;NAE & NRC, 2008NRC, 2014;Pleasants & Olson, 2019). At the elementary level, research into teachers' and students' views of the nature of engineering has documented multiple misconceptions (Capobianco, Diefes-dux, Mena, & Weller, 2011;Cunningham, Lachapelle, & Lindgren-Streicher, 2005, 2006Karatas et al, 2011;Lambert et al, 2007;Montfort, Brown, & Whritenour, 2013), but additional work is needed in this area. The nature of engineering is multidimensional (Pleasants & Olson, 2019), but most research studies have used instruments that are not tailored to specific nature of engineering dimensions.…”

Eliciting Yucatan peninsula teachers' images of engineering and engineers

“…However, most of them are far form actually depicting an engineer in action [3]. This means that if Yucatan peninsula teachers' perceptions of and attitudes toward engineering are not accurate, they could play a significant role in perpetuating incorrect perceptions about engineering [3,17]. This could be reflected into their curricula and in the way they deliver messages about the nature of engineering to their students.…”

Promoting interdisciplinarity through mathematical modelling

“…The world's demand for skills in mathematics, science, engineering, and technology is increasing rapidly, yet supply is declining across several nations, with the number of engineers graduating from U.S. and Australian institutions slipping 20% in recent years (National Academy of Sciences, 2007;Taylor, 2008). Given the waning student interest in engineering and poor educational preparedness (Dawes & Rasmussen, 2007;Lambert, Diefes-Dux, Beck, Duncan, Oware, & Nemeth, 2007), it is imperative we act now by incorporating engineering-based problem experiences within primary and middle school mathematics and science curricula.…”