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Engineering in Early Education: a Multicultural Comparison of Web Resources

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Conference

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Vancouver, BC

Publication Date

June 26, 2011

Start Date

June 26, 2011

End Date

June 29, 2011

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Using Web-Resources and Literature to Teach Engineering in P-8

Tagged Division

K-12 & Pre-College Engineering

Page Count

12

Page Numbers

22.593.1 - 22.593.12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--17874

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/17874

Download Count

469

Paper Authors

biography

Aikaterini Bagiati Purdue University, West Lafayette

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Having acquired a Diploma in Electrical Engineering and a Masters Degree in Advanced Digital Communication in the Aristotle University in Greece, and after having worked as an educator both in formal and informal settings for 10 years now, I have, since January 2008, started the Ph.D. Program in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University.
My research interests are : Developmental Engineering;
Engineering in PreK-3; Early Engineering Curriculum Development; Use of Art to enhance Engineering Design; Educational Software; and Educational Robotics.

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biography

So Yoon Yoon Purdue University, West Lafayette Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-1868-1054

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So Yoon Yoon is a doctoral candidate in gifted education at Purdue University. She enjoys working with diverse students talented in STEM areas. Her current research interest is to scale an instrument to measure students’ spatial ability, specifically spatial visualization ability in 3-D mental rotation (the Revised PSVT:R) using Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT); to investigate associations between PreK-16 students’ spatial ability and their STEM performance; to conduct meta-analyses to examine gender differences in spatial ability and intervention effects in STEM education; and to identify PreK-16 students’ talents in STEM.

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Demetra Evangelou Purdue University, West Lafayette

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Dr. Demetra Evangelou is Assistant Professor of Engineering Education in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She has a Ph.D. in Early Childhood Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and international expertise in early childhood policy and research methods. Her current research focuses on developmental engineering, early education antecedents of engineering thinking, developmental factors in engineering pedagogy, technological literacy and human-artifact interactions. She is a member of Sigma Xi Science Honor Society and in 2009 he was awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER Award.

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Garene Kaloustian Lebanese American University

biography

Osman Cekic Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University

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Osman Cekic holds a Ph.D. in higher education and student affairs from Indiana University at Bloomington and a master’s degree in secondary school administration from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and a Bachelor’s degree in educational administration and planning from Ankara University in Turkey. He previously worked at the Indiana Education Policy Center, Project on Academic Success (PAS), as a graduate assistant to the vice president for enrollment services for Indiana University, and as a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University, West Lafayette. Dr. Cekic’s research interests include higher education policy, finance and the linkages between budget and organizational culture, and college student retention. Currently Dr. Cekic works at as a research assistant at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Faculty of Education in Turkey, where he continues to explore issues related to science and engineering at the graduate level, engineering education cultures, as well as leadership and policy issues in engineering education. Osman has authored and co-authored various scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and policy papers related to institutions of higher education, finance and financial aid in higher education, student success, and leadership and policy issues in engineering education.

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Jiabin Zhu Purdue University, West Lafayette

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Jiabin Zhu is a Ph.D. student in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She obtained a B.S. in Physics from East China Normal University, a M.S. in Optics from Chinese
Academy of Sciences, and a second M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University. Her primary research interests relate to the professional development, cross-national comparative studies, and mentoring of engineering graduate students. She is a student member of American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

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Alejandra J. Magana Purdue University, West Lafayette Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-6117-7502

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Alejandra J. Magana is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Technology and the School of Engineering Education, at Purdue University. Alejandra’s research interest are focused on identifying how computational tools and methods can support the understanding of complex phenomena for scientific discovery and for inquiry learning.

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Abstract

Engineering in Early Education: a Multicultural Comparison of Web Resources.Engineering education for the precollege years is an emerging academic discipline. The focus is onaddressing the need to further understand and improve the ways that engineers are formally educated. Oneof the fundamental research questions brought to light by the emerging discipline involves identifyingopportune times and approaches in introducing students to engineering, starting perhaps from the earlyages, while in parallel content appropriateness is also discussed. At the same time there is an ongoingeffort to understand if, how, and when informal engineering education takes place.When introducing engineering at the early education level, teachers’ and parents’ preparation and supportbecome a crucial factor. Introducing engineering in the early years raises a need for understanding thecontent, while also posing the challenge of preparing teachers to incorporate it into their practice.Teachers have left the traditional method of looking for new information in books, journals andmagazines. Further when examining international school settings, the development of technologicalinfrastructure is not on the same level in every country. The advent of the Internet, coming at a faster orslower pace, created an expansion of how teachers receive professional development and how theyprepare for courses. In parallel the wide information release is also used by many parents who are tryingto enhance their children’s informal education. While the professional development offered byuniversities and school districts and further educational entities provides the majority of formal optionsaccessed by teachers, many informal sources are also utilized by teachers and parents on a day-to-daybasis.A preliminary search for P-12 engineering materials revealed a wide variety of curricula, lesson plans andactivities. Narrowing it down to the P-3 level though reveals that the pedagogical and content reliablesources at that level are very limited and particularly tough to identify among the plethora of information.Furthermore, although the internet allows for access to curricula developed and offered to a globalaudience, the language in which this content is presented is still a barrier and while it makes the contentwidely available to some target groups, there is still a large number of teachers that cannot take advantageof this shared information.This study is an attempt to examine the existing early education engineering curricula created by entitiesofficially related to education in 7 different languages. It also aims to present the current comparativeinternational landscape of this field, and offer to teachers and parents interested in introducing theirchildren to engineering a reliable starting point towards early engineering information gathering. Thepaper also addresses emerging pedagogical and engineering fidelity issues.

Bagiati, A., & Yoon, S. Y., & Evangelou, D., & Kaloustian, G., & Cekic, O., & Zhu, J., & Magana, A. J. (2011, June), Engineering in Early Education: a Multicultural Comparison of Web Resources Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2--17874

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