Tensions Arising When Teaching Scientific Disciplinary Core Ideas via Engineering Practices (Evaluation)
- Conference
- Location
-
Salt Lake City, Utah
- Publication Date
-
June 23, 2018
- Start Date
-
June 23, 2018
- End Date
-
July 27, 2018
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
-
Pre-College Engineering Education
- Page Count
-
19
- DOI
-
10.18260/1-2--31073
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/31073
- Download Count
-
463
Paper Authors
Hannah Smith Brooks University of Texas at Austin
Hannah Brooks is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on promoting equitable access through collaboration and instructional design. She is also interested in improving teacher education programs in the sciences by studying how teachers plan and structure learning using various methods. She has a BA in Biology and a M.Ed. in middle and secondary instruction from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Her interests developed during her time in the science classroom, having worked in both comprehensive and early college high schools. Leadership experiences at the school and county levels challenged her to study how teachers and students interact during learning. She has presented at various national and regional conferences, with work appearing in The Science Teacher and on TeachEngineering.com, and has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.
Todd L. Hutner University of Texas at Austin
Assistant Director for Research-Practitioner Partnerships
The Center for STEM Education
The University of Texas at Austin
Victor Sampson University of Texas at Austin
Associate Professor of STEM Education
Director of the Center for STEM Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Lawrence Chu University of Texas at Austin
Lawrence Chu is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin studying STEM Education. His research interests include engineering integration in secondary science classes, science assessment development, and educational program evaluation.
Richard H. Crawford University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Richard H. Crawford is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and is the Temple Foundation Endowed Faculty Fellow No. 3. He is also Director of the Design Projects program in Mechanical Engineering. He received his BSME from Louisiana State University in 1982, and his MSME in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1989, both from Purdue University. He teaches mechanical engineering design and geometry modeling for design. Dr. Crawford’s research interests span topics in computer-aided mechanical design and design theory and methodology. Dr. Crawford is co-founder of the DTEACh program, a ”Design Technology” program for K-12, and is active on the faculty of the UTeachEngineering program that seeks to educate teachers of high school engineering.
Stephanie Rivale University of Texas at Austin
Stephanie Rivale is a research faculty member at the Center for STEM Education at the University of Texas. She received her Ph.D. in STEM Education at the University of Texas. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Rochester and her M.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Colorado. She has collaborated on engineering education research with both the VaNTH Engineering Research Center, UTeachEngineering, and the TEAMS Program at the University of Boulder. Dr. Rivale’s research uses recent advances in our understanding of how people learn to evaluate and improve student learning in college and K-12 engineering classrooms. Her work also focuses on improving access and equity for women and students of color in STEM fields.
Christina L. Baze
University of Texas at Austin
orcid.org/0000-0002-0418-1772
Abstract
The Framework for K-12 Science Education calls for engineering practices to be integrated into the teaching and learning of science. We have developed a new instructional model to meet this need, so that teachers are able to develop engineering design tasks that will give students an opportunity to learn how to use engineering practices and the core ideas of science at the same time to develop solutions to meaningful problems. A number of tensions have arisen as we have iteratively designed and tested this new instructional framework in middle school classrooms. In this paper, we identify five specific tensions that arise from (1) attempting to integrate engineering practices and core ideas in non-NGSS states; (2) a need to focus on scientific concepts and engineering practices at the same time; (3) the time required to engaged in engineering practices; (4) different epistemological norms of scientific and engineering communities; and, (5) attempting to balance authenticity and feasibility inside science classrooms. We anticipate that these tensions will arise whenever educators attempt to develop design tasks that integrate engineering practices and core ideas of science for use in science classrooms. While we are unable to provide definitive recommendations for resolving the five tensions prior to beginning a new curriculum or instructional development project, awareness of these potential obstacles will likely ease the challenges associated with the integration of engineering and science in the future projects.
Brooks, H. S., & Hutner, T. L., & Sampson, V., & Chu, L., & Crawford, R. H., & Rivale, S., & Baze, C. L. (2018, June), Tensions Arising When Teaching Scientific Disciplinary Core Ideas via Engineering Practices (Evaluation) Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--31073
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2018 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015