Engineering in Pre-College Settings: Synthesizing Research, Policy, and Practices

PREFACE

In August 2011, a group of faculty and staff from Purdue University organized a summit on P–12 engineering and design research funded by the Institute for P–12 Engineering Research and Learning (INSPIRE). The main goal of this summit was to improve the quality and coherence of research in engineering education. At that point neither the framework for science education nor the Next Generation Science Standards had been publicized or finalized. The P–12 Engineering and Design Education Research Summit (P–12 Summit) achieved two goals. The summit (1) brought together a diverse range of stakeholders committed to engineering education, such as researchers, teachers, and professionals engaged in informal education, and (2) supported dialogue to assess the current state of P–12 engineering education research and identify the needs of the engineering education research community. Many of the authors who contributed to this book attended that summit. Hence, this volume includes chapters that are written by a diverse group of scholars and educators, not just university faculty, who are at the frontiers of efforts in engineering education both in formal classroom and informal learning settings.

Our goal in organizing this volume is to disseminate research and practices in P–12 engineering education that is inclusive of diverse stakeholders and their diverse needs. The first two chapters provide a policy perspective and review trends that preceded current developments in highlighting engineering in pre-college settings. Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 discuss principles underlying effective curriculum development and STEM integration through engineering. Chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10 present research studies with rigorous methodologies and discuss the challenges of and supports for infusing engineering in P–12 classrooms. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 focus on teacher education and include a series of synthesis papers. There are also two chapters, 14 and 15, that discuss assessment of design and creativity, which are integral components of engineering, and Chapter 16 provides a broader discussion of assessment in engineering education. Chapters 17, 18, 19, and 20 present engineering learning that occurs beyond the classroom, at home or in museums. Finally, we conclude with a summary in Chapter 21 and provide recommendations for future research.

We, the editors, are excited about the diversity of practices, methods, and findings presented in this volume. The diverse backgrounds of the authors support our intent to reach diverse readers, some of whom may be interested in basic or applied research and others who may need to read a synthesis of these studies. Each of the chapters discusses an aspect of P–12 engineering education and provides recommendations on future efforts.

Şenay Purzer, Johannes Strobel, and Monica E. Cardella

PART I

Current State of Engineering

Education Research and Practice

CHAPTER 1

THE RISING PROFILE OF STEM LITERACY THROUGH NATIONAL STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENTS

Cary Sneider¹ and Şenay Purzer²

¹Portland State University, ²Purdue University

ABSTRACT

This chapter recounts the history of education standards leading to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) movement. We begin with the chronology of key developments in the 1990s, then proceed to the early 21st century when technology and engineering emerged as core subjects in several states, following the lead of Massachusetts. These movements have great promise for a gradual and sustainable transformation of the US education system, culminating in the Next Generation Science Standards, which aims to integrate all four STEM fields into the K-12 educational experience for all students.

THE SHIFT FROM SCIENCE EDUCATION TO STEM EDUCATION

In the past ten years in the United States there has been increasing discussion about replacing nation’s focus on science and mathematics education with a broader curriculum on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) for all K–12 students. A number of educators credit Judith A. Ramaley, a former director of the Education and Human Resources Division at the National Science Foundation (NSF), for coining the term. Before she took that job in 2001, the label was SMET, which was used in requests for grant proposals by NSF. In addition to sounding better, the change was made as part of a policy shift at the agency to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning for all students, beginning in the earliest grades. Dr. Ramaley, who is now the president of Winona State University, notes that STEM may be stitched across the banner, but what’s important is what’s occurring under the banner (Cavanagh & Rotter, 2008).

To some extent science and mathematics teachers have always included elements of technology and engineering in their teaching so as to provide a real-world context for learning. For example, science teachers typically use the technology of rocketry to illustrate Newton’s laws, and mathematics teachers sometimes pose engineering problems so students can practice algebra or geometry skills. In other words, mathematics and science teachers have a tradition of using technology and engineering to support learning of mathematics and science so their students can become mathematically and scientifically literate. Still, the new emphasis on STEM represents a profound break with the past since it challenges teachers and students to work toward a new educational goal—to become literate in all four STEM subjects. In this chapter, we describe the historical development of STEM education policy and provide a framework defining STEM literacy.

The first part of the chapter describes the early history of national science education standards during the 1990s, which gave birth to the STEM movement. This section focuses on technology and engineering in these early standards documents, and on similarities and differences among the three major standards for mathematics, science, and technology. The second part of the chapter describes developments that occurred at the national level and that gave shape to the STEM movement. These movements have great promise for a gradual and sustainable transformation of our educational system. The final part of the chapter provides a clear and unambiguous definition of what it means to be STEM literate, tells the story of how technology and engineering came to be core subjects in Massachusetts, and ends with the promise of Next Generation Science Standards as a means for finally integrating all four STEM fields. The chronology of the key developments in STEM education is summarized in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1. STEM milestones

DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL SCIENCE STANDARDS

The first document to recommend K–12 standards was the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, which was published by the National Council for the Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in 1989. The document set out a bold vision that included not just arithmetic standards, but also a comprehensive agenda for what all students should know and be able to do in key mathematics fields. A number of derivative documents have since been developed, the most recent being Focal Points for Kindergarten Through Grade 8 Mathematics: A Quest for Coherence (NCTM, 2006), which is a much shorter description of what all students should learn in mathematics at each grade level.

Mathematics standards have not referenced technology or engineering, except for occasional references to the use of digital technologies and computational thinking. However, technology and engineering have been major features of science standards, starting with publication of Science for All Americans by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 1989). Although this report did not use the term standards and focused only on what students should know after 12 years of schooling, Science for All Americans served as the catalyst and model for all subsequent efforts to develop K–12 science standards. Chapter 3 in Science for All Americans focused on the nature of technology, its relationship to science, and ways in which new technologies are engineered. Chapter 8 focused on the designed world, including essential technological systems such as agriculture, medicine, and transportation. And Chapter 9 focused on the mathematical world and the importance of including mathematics in science teaching. In other words, Science for All Americans laid out, in some detail, the basic outlines of the STEM movement, at least as it applied to the transformation of science education.

A major limitation to Science for All Americans was that it provided little guidance for teachers and curriculum developers. Although it did a wonderful job of identifying the end-point of K–12 education, it offered no suggestions to achieve this. Consequently, the next job for the AAAS was to describe benchmarks, statements of knowledge or abilities that students would need to accomplish at different phases of their education to achieve the understandings and abilities described in Science for All Americans. This next document, Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS, 1993), used the same chapter headings as the earlier document, but specified what all students should know and be able to do by the end of grades 2, 5, 8, and 12.

A later development of Benchmarks was an effort to map benchmarks from grade to grade, showing how lower level understandings and abilities related to higher level learning. These maps were published as the Atlas of Science Literacy, Volume 1 (AAAS, 2001), and Volume 2 (AAAS, 2007). This entire set of documents from the AAAS has been tremendously valuable to science teachers, curriculum developers, and teacher educators, because the documents provide a clear and comprehensive overview of what students should learn during their K–12 years of schooling and when they can be expected to learn it. The Atlas also provided a vivid picture of what STEM integration might look like, although the emphasis was still on the core science disciplines.

The early 1990s was an especially fertile time for rethinking the landscape of science education. One of the ideas that gained traction for a time was to restructure the middle and high school curriculum along the model used in the Soviet Union. In this model every science subject was taught every year from grades 6–12. This idea was embodied in Scope, Sequence, and Coordination of Secondary School Science (Aldridge, 1992), which outlined how the key ideas in the sciences would build during the second half of every student’s schooling. The concept resulted in the development of new instructional materials that integrated the science disciplines, and many middle and high school science departments reorganized their courses of study accordingly. While the Scope, Sequence, and Coordination concept was eventually abandoned, it did serve to highlight the advantages of cross-disciplinary, or integrated curricula, which has recently been raised again in the context of integrating the four STEM disciplines.

One of the results of these pioneering efforts was to whet the appetites of science educators for a single set of educational standards, like those enjoyed by their colleagues in mathematics. Because the different approaches taken by the AAAS and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) created some confusion in the field, national leaders decided to unite these different approaches under the auspices of the National Research Council (NRC). The NRC is the operational arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which is highly respected for conducting thorough reviews of research in controversial areas and producing definitive consensus reports. The NRC convened committees on science education content, professional development, and assessment—involving more than 100 leading educators and scientists from throughout the United States over a period of about three years—and drafted the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996).

Although the AAAS Benchmarks and Atlas continued to be used by many educators because they so clearly described what students were expected to accomplish at different grade levels, the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996) became the primary policy document referenced by most state standards and instructional materials that claimed to be standards-based. In addition to specifying the core content within the disciplines, the National Research Council (1996) presented standards for what students should know and be able to do with respect to scientific inquiry, technology, and science in social and personal perspectives. The document also put forward standards for the professional development of teachers, for assessment in science, and for the educational systems needed to deliver a content-based science education for all students.

TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING IN NATIONAL STANDARDS

The National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996) included science and technology standards but with an emphasis on (1) the connections between the natural and the designed worlds, and (2) the abilities related to the design process as a complement to the inquiry process. Content Standard E, science and technology, described what students should know and be able to do with respect to technology. The National Standards carefully distinguished technology from science.

As used in the Standards, the central distinguishing characteristic between science and technology is a difference in goal: The goal of science is to understand the natural world, and the goal of technology is to make modifications in the world to meet human needs. Technology as design is included in the Standards as parallel to science as inquiry. (NRC, 1996, p. 24)

In 2000, four years after the publication of science education standards, the International Technology Education Association (now the International Technology and Engineering Education Association, or ITEEA) published Standards for Technological Literacy. The ITEEA is the professional organization of technology teachers. The Standards for Technological Literacy laid out 20 standards for what all students should know and be able to do in order to become technologically literate. These included standards about the nature of technology, the relationship between technology and society, the processes of engineering design, and key technological systems, including energy, transportation, medicine, communications, manufacturing, and construction. The standards were broken down into benchmarks for grades K–2, 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12.

Although the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and other groups considered developing separate standards for engineering to match those in science, mathematics, and technology, no separate standards were ever developed. A report of a workshop on this question found that although it is theoretically possible to develop standards for K–12 engineering education, it would be extremely difficult to ensure their usefulness and effective implementation (NAE, 2010, p. 1).

WHAT IS STEM LITERACY?

Until the beginning of the standards movement, the term literacy had the restricted meaning of being able to read and write. Discussion of educational progress in a region or country often used the term literacy rate to mean the percentage of people who were able to read and write at an eighth-grade level. Because the ability to read and write is essential for all citizens, the definition of literacy was gradually expanded to refer to what everyone should know and be able to do in order to function in modern society—as opposed to the kind of knowledge required by people preparing for a specific profession or course of study. For example, it is now widely accepted that all students need to learn the fundamentals of algebra in high school, while only students aiming to major in technical fields in college would be expected to take a course in calculus.

Let’s first review the definitions of literacy associated with individual STEM subjects. The better we are able to describe what literacy means in each STEM area, the easier it will be to develop curricula and assessments that target what students need to learn. Drawing on several of the documents described in this paper and summarized in Table 1.1, we propose the following definitions:

• Scientific literacy includes knowledge of the key facts, concepts, principles, laws, and theories of the science disciplines, as well as the ability to connect ideas across disciplines and apply them in new situations. It also includes the reasoning ability to support claims from evidence, to reflect on the nature of science and on one’s own thinking, and to participate productively with peers in scientific discussions (adapted from Michaels, Shouse, & Schweingruber, 2007).

• Technological literacy is the ability to use, understand, and make decisions about technology, where technology is broadly defined as all of the ways people modify the natural world to meet human needs or desires or to accomplish goals. The ability to learn quickly how to use and apply new technologies is especially important as the pace of technological change continues to quicken (adapted from ITEEA, 2007).

• Engineering literacy is the ability to solve problems and accomplish goals by applying the engineering design process—a systematic and often iterative approach to designing objects, processes, and systems to meet human needs and accomplish goals. Students who are able to apply the engineering design process to new situations know how to define a solvable problem, to generate and test potential solutions, and to modify the design by making tradeoffs among multiple considerations in order to reach an optimal solution. Engineering literacy also involves understanding the mutually supportive relationship between science and engineering, and the ways in which engineers respond to the interests and needs of society and in turn affect society and the environment by bringing about technological change (adapted from NAGB, 2010).

• Mathematical literacy involves understanding mathematical concepts, operations, and relations; proficiency in carrying out mathematical procedures flexibly, accurately and appropriately; a disposition to see mathematics as sensible, useful, and worthwhile; and confidence in one’s own efficacy to use mathematics (adapted from CCSSO & NGA, 2010).

A person who is STEM literate is a person who has sufficient knowledge and skills in all four fields to participate and thrive in modern society with confidence and the capacity to use, manage, and evaluate the technologies prevalent in everyday life, as well as the capacity to understand scientific principles and technological processes necessary to solve problems, develop arguments, and make decisions.

COMPARING SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND TECHNOLOGY STANDARDS

Recognizing that there may be common themes among the standards for science, mathematics, and technology and with the argument that engineering education cannot be accomplished without a true integration of these subjects, Purzer and her colleagues analyzed the content of all three sets of national standards (mathematics, science, and technology) to identify their similarities (Chae, Purzer, & Cardella, 2010). Although each document used substantially different terminology and were organized differently, certain themes emerged (Figure 1.1). Themes that were common to two of the three standards documents were as follows:

Figure 1.1. National standards documents and overlapping themes (NRC, 1996; ITEEA, 2007; NCTM, 2000).

• Environmental issues were found in both the science standards and the technology standards.

• Change and patterns were major themes of both the science and mathematics standards.

• Tools were essential features of both the mathematics standards and the technology standards.

Themes that were common to all three standards documents included processes, systems and models, and societal impacts. These common themes are listed in Table 1.2 and briefly described below.

Table 1.2. Common themes in science, mathematics, and technology.

Processes. Each of the three national standards documents described not only content—what students are expected to know—but also processes or skills that are specific to each of the three fields. In science, the inquiry process was described as a means for asking and answering questions about the natural world. In technology, the engineering design process was described as the means for solving problems by modifying and creating technologies. And in mathematics, the desired process was the ability to use a variety of mathematical skills to solve problems.

Systems and Models. Each of the three documents discussed systems and models as a means for understanding, analyzing, and operating on the world. In science, students are expected to use scientific models to represent systems, such as ecosystems, the ocean-atmosphere system, or the human body system. The technology standards described the value of technological models from representations of simple machines, to scale models and prototypes, to dynamic and complex systems such as traffic flow on a superhighway. The mathematics standards referred to the use of various numerical, algebraic, and coordinate systems for creating mathematical models of real or imagined phenomena.

Societal Impacts. The science standards included a major section at each grade-level band about the societal impacts of science and technology, so that students gain the scientific knowledge they will need to understand and make decisions about such contemporary issues as health, environmental change, and natural disasters. Standards for technology emphasized the ways that new technological tools and devices affect society, and ways in which society, in turn, determines the new technologies that will be developed and that become widespread. The mathematics standards focused almost entirely on the utility of mathematics for analyzing data as a source of input when making decisions in everyday life.

To summarize, early efforts to develop national standards began with seminal documents in mathematics and science, followed a decade later by standards in technology. Figure 1.1 only includes standards in science, technology, and mathematics, which raises the question: What is the place of engineering in STEM? While these documents include attributes of engineering, no stand-alone engineering standards have been written, largely because there was no niche for them in the school curriculum. In fact, engineering later emerged as a means of integrating science, technology, and mathematics in the curriculum, and offered an escape from disciplinary silos. In the next section we look at what has happened to these standards as state leaders took up the challenge of developing STEM standards and assessments.

THE RISE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING IN STATE STANDARDS

Unlike most countries in which the power to set educational policies is centralized at the national level, in the United States decision-making about what students should learn is vested in local school boards and responsibility for providing overall guidance and support is left up to the states. During the 1990s, state-level support took the form of educational standards and assessments for mathematics, English, social studies, and science. By 1999, 47 states had developed standards in science (Blank, Manise, & Brathwaite, 1999), and soon afterward all states developed science standards. A report on the influence of the National Science Education Standards indicated that both the Benchmarks for Science Literacy and the National Science Education Standards were influential in shaping state level standards (Hollweg & Hill, 2003).

In 2005, a group of professors and graduate fellows at the University of Connecticut proposed an engineering framework for a high school science course that aimed to change the current paradigm of compartmentalized science content predominant in secondary schools throughout the nation by promoting the simultaneous teaching of multiple science disciplines in concert with mathematics while incorporating engineering concepts and designs (Koehler, Faraclas, Sanchez, Latif, & Kazerounian, 2005, p. 4). Today we would call the idea an integrative STEM framework with a focus on engineering. As a step in developing their framework, the University of Connecticut team undertook a study of high school science standards in 49 states to determine the extent to which state standards would allow for such an integrated curriculum. That study found that most states had already included some form of technology standards within their science framework, but most of those documents focused on standards related to technology and society. Only 18 states, mostly in the northeast, had a deeper integration of engineering standards that included engineering design skills (Koehler et al., 2006).

Despite slow progress in integrating technology and engineering into state standards, strong support came from other directions. By 2003, the National Science Foundation had already supported more than 100 projects on engineering and/or technology in the science curriculum (Householder, 2007). And in 2004 the National Academy of Engineering published an influential report, Technically Speaking: Why All Americans Need to Know More About Technology (Pearson & Young, 2002), which made a compelling case that technology should be included as a core subject for every student. The following statement is illustrative of the arguments in the report:

As far into the future as our imaginations take us, we will face challenges that depend on the development and application of technology. Better health, more abundant food, more humane living and working conditions, cleaner air and water, more effective education, and scores of other improvements in the human condition are within our grasp. But none of these improvements are guaranteed, and many problems will arise that we cannot predict. To take full advantage of the benefits and to recognize, address, or even avoid the pitfalls of technology, Americans must become better stewards of technological change. (Pearson & Young, 2002, p. 12)

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has maintained its support for engineering education throughout the decade by issuing a number of reports on technology and engineering education, including a survey and review of assessment instruments (Garmire & Pearson, 2006); a report on the status of K–12 technology and engineering education, with a review of instructional materials and educational research (Katehi, Pearson, & Feder, 2009); and a report on the potential and advisability of creating separate engineering standards (NAE, 2010).

Complementary to calls for the infusion of technology and engineering into the curriculum for all students, a number of urgent reports came out during the decade calling attention to the sorry state of technical education in the United States in contrast to other countries. An especially influential report from the National Research Council in 2005, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, was a clarion call to action. According to the report,

An educated, innovative, motivated workforce—human capital—is the most precious resource of any country in this new, flat world. Yet there is widespread concern about our K–12 science and mathematics education system, the foundation of that human capital.

Students in the United States are not keeping up with their counterparts in other countries—in 2003, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Programme for International Student Assessment measured the performance of 15-year-olds in 49 industrialized countries and found that US students scored in the middle or in the bottom half of the group in three important ways: our students placed 16th in reading, 19th in science literacy, and 24th in mathematics.

After secondary school, fewer US students pursue science and engineering degrees than students in other countries. About 6% of our undergraduates study engineering; that percentage is the second lowest among developed countries. Engineering students make up about 12% of undergraduates in most of Europe, 20% in Singapore, and more than 40% in China. Students throughout much of the world see careers in science and engineering as the path to a better future. (NRC, 2005, pp. 30–31)

Surprisingly, Rising Above the Gathering Storm offered no recommendations for increasing technology and engineering education at the K–12 level, but only for strengthening our nation’s science and mathematics infrastructure by increasing the number of science and mathematics teachers and the number of students who take the Advanced Placement exams in mathematics and science each year. Nonetheless, the report called attention to the need to encourage more students to pursue engineering careers and provided a sufficient rationale for strengthening the STEM movement.

Despite support from major organizations, strong undercurrents retarded the integration of technology and engineering into mainstream educational programs throughout the decade. One of these undercurrents was the process whereby states developed their own unique standards. State committees assigned to develop standards typically consisted of science educators who were either unfamiliar with the STEM concept or hostile to integrating technology and engineering into the curriculum. Another problem was a series of blows to the US economy, which reduced focus and funding for education. Perhaps the most serious undercurrent, however, was a legislative initiative that ironically was intended to increase support for education.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2002, also known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required that every state adopt its own unique standards and corresponding state assessments for mathematics, English, social studies, and science. Many states were already working on these systems when the law was passed with the strong support of President George W. Bush. Unfortunately, certain provisions of the law tended to undermine its lofty purpose. For example, the law stipulated that students must be tested every year in mathematics and English from grades 3 through 8, and that test scores must improve by a certain amount every year (known as Annual Yearly Progress, or AYP). If a school failed to meet AYP targets, the administrators and teachers were subject to severe sanctions, including, in some cases, dismissal of the entire school staff.

While other provisions of the law were also problematic, the pressure to improve test scores has been the most serious objection to NCLB. At first many science educators were relieved that students would only be tested in English and mathematics, and that testing in science would be postponed a few years. That would allow teachers to continue using innovative and engaging methods, such as hands-on inquiry approaches, and in some cases technology and engineering, without the pressure of preparing students for standardized tests. However, it soon became apparent that increased pressure to have students perform well on mathematics and English tests meant that more of the school day would be devoted to those subjects and less to other subjects. According to a national survey (CEP, 2008), a large majority of schools substantially decreased the time spent on science for students in grades K–8, resulting in a reduction of time spent on science by about one third (CEP, 2008, Table 3, p. 5). In states where the decline in time spent on science was especially severe, elementary students performed poorly on the science component of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Blank, 2013).

TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING IN MASSACHUSETTS STANDARDS

In 2001, Massachusetts became the first state to include the words engineering and technology in its state science standards, and to assess student learning in all four STEM fields. The Massachusetts Science and Technology Engineering Curriculum Framework specified what all students were expected to know and be able to do in science, technology, and engineering. As in most states, separate standards were written for mathematics. Since 2006, all eighth-grade students have been tested in English and mathematics, as well as in science, technology, and engineering, in a combined test. Starting in 2010, high school students could choose to take tests in biology, chemistry, physics, and technology-engineering, and they must pass at least one of these in order to graduate from high school. With those policy decisions Massachusetts became the first state to treat technology and engineering as equally important as the other core science subjects.

The Massachusetts technology-engineering initiative is now 10 years old and is becoming a mature educational system rather than just an experiment (Sneider & Brenninkmeyer, 2007). The effort to establish technology and engineering as a part of science has gone well beyond standards and assessments, although the road has not been smooth. A major force in support of the new effort has been Boston’s Museum of Science, which established the National Center for Technological Literacy (NCTL) in 2004. The NCTL has developed instructional programs for the elementary, middle, and high school levels, aligned with the state’s standards, and has conducted professional development programs on how to use the materials in the classroom. The elementary program developed by the NCTL, Engineering is Elementary, has been especially successful in achieving widespread use in all 50 states (Museum of Science, 2011).

When the NCTL was first formed, it soon became apparent from discussions with teachers and administrators that few districts in the state knew how to implement the new standards. The new instructional materials were just starting to be developed; consequently teachers had few resources. As a first step, the NCTL staff developed a database of instructional programs that could be used to teach technology and engineering. A second strategy was to invite teams from 10 of the state’s approximately 350 school districts to spend a week together in the summer sharing ideas for how to implement the new standards. The first teams were already known to be early adopters of technology and engineering standards, so they had numerous ideas to share. Over the next two years, teams from an additional 40 districts joined the original group, so that the more experienced teams could share ideas for what worked and what methods to avoid. Although major funding for the project ended more than three years ago, contributions from individuals have enabled the NCTL to continue to evolve the program.

The Massachusetts story is proof of existence for successful systemic change. It illustrates that a state can transform its educational system if there is a strong commitment that is widely shared by state leaders. There is growing evidence that other states are following suit. In a recent study, Carr, Bennett, and Strobel (2012) found that as many as 34 states included engineering, technology, and design components in their content standards, although with varying emphasis.

NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING LITERACY

A second significant development concerns the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), otherwise known as The Nation’s Report Card, since it is the only test given to students in all states. Although NAEP does not publish test scores for individual students, its results are used as a gauge of student achievement in the different states. For the first time in 2009, 10% of the NAEP science assessment items asked students to apply their understanding of science to engineering design tasks. Student performance was reported on several of the test items so that interested parties can see what STEM assessment looks like and judge the current levels of student knowledge and skills in answering these kinds of questions.

More recently, an even more significant step has been taken with the development of the Technology and Engineering Literacy Framework for the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The NAEP Framework provides detailed assessment targets in three areas: (1) Design and Systems, which encompasses many of the core principles of engineering; (2) Information and Communications Technologies, including capabilities to use a wide range of digital tools; and (3) Technology and Society. This third area will assess students’ understanding of how technological change can affect both human society and the environment, and how the decisions that people make as individuals and as a society determine the future directions of technology. This latest addition to the NAEP suite of national tests means that US students will be tested on all four STEM areas beginning in 2014.

Many educators anticipate that, as a whole, our students will not perform well on the NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy Assessment, since many states do not even have standards related to technology and engineering, and even states that do may not have implementation systems such as those being developed in Massachusetts. However, being able to assess student knowledge and capabilities is a significant step in the right direction.

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

Perhaps the most important new development is the common core standards movement that is currently underway. Partly in response to persistently low scores on international tests of science and mathematics, and partly in recognition that standards in many states are not sufficient to provide clear targets for aligning curriculum, instruction, and assessment, educational leaders have been open to the idea of adopting the same standards for all states. Common Core standards have been written for English Language Arts and mathematics, and 46 states have formally agreed to adopt them (CCSSO & NGA, 2010).

Common Core standards have a number of advantages, such as allowing states to pool their efforts in curriculum, assessment, and professional development and ensuring that a student who moves from one state to another is less likely to miss out on key content or skills. Common standards will also enable textbook writers to focus on the most important ideas for each grade without having to create separate textbooks for each state.

Science joined the common core movement in April 2013. Since it had been 15 years since the National Science Education Standards was published, it was time for a major revision. The work was done in two phases. In the first phase a committee of the National Research Council, consisting primarily of scientists, engineers, and educational researchers, developed a guiding document called A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (NRC, 2012), which included a chapter on the Practices of Science and Engineering and another chapter on Technology, Engineering, and the Applications of Science. Although in some respects this reflected the inclusion of technology and engineering in the earlier standards documents, this new document made clear distinctions between engineering and technology, and raised the prominence of engineering design to the same level as scientific inquiry. Furthermore, the document recommended integrating science and engineering practices with core ideas in the traditional science disciplines, as well as clear linkages with the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English language arts.

In phase two, the Framework was handed off to Achieve, Inc.—the group that developed the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English language arts. Achieve formed a committee of 41 members, consisting primarily of teachers, to manage development of the standards on behalf of and in coordination with state leadership teams. The first public draft was released on May 18, 2012, and a final version was released in April 2013.

The Next Generation Science Standards, which have already been adopted by a handful of states as this book goes to press, are remarkable in the extent to which they bring integrated STEM literacy into the mainstream of our nation’s K-12 educational system. As recommended by the Framework, engineering and technology both appear as a fourth discipline, along with physical science, life science, and Earth and space science. Furthermore, engineering is woven throughout the document, captured in a number of performance expectations that specify what students should know and be able to do at various stages of their K–12 experience. In addition to the practices of engineering design, there are frequent references to the crosscutting ideas that science and engineering are mutually supportive and that science, engineering, and technology have profound implications for society and the natural world. Connections to the Common Core State Standards in mathematics appear on nearly every page, completing the integration of the four STEM fields.

Naturally, standards do not by themselves transform an educational system. But they do provide the intellectual underpinnings on which new educational structures can be built. For the first time, engineering and technology have a seat at the table, alongside science and mathematics.

Although the rising profile of integrated STEM may seem to be a new development, this historical account illustrates that it builds on the efforts of a great many dedicated people over nearly a quarter of a century.

CONCLUSION

As 50 states and 16,000 school districts in the U.S. begin to adopt new STEM standards, we can look forward to much deeper engagement by our youth in learning to use and make decisions about new technological tools, and to apply their knowledge of mathematics and science to find innovative solutions to authentic engineering challenges, taking into account societal and environmental impacts. These changes in our educational system have great potential to improve our children’s chances for success in life and to enable more high school graduates to follow career pathways in STEM and eventually to apply what they learn in the STEM fields to tackle formidable global challenges.

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CHAPTER 2

K–12 ENGINEERING: THE MISSING CORE DISCIPLINE

Ioannis Miaoulis

Museum of Science, Boston

ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that engineering should be a part of the core K–12 curriculum because engineering enhances technological literacy, which should be considered an essential basic literacy. Engineering promotes problem solving and project-based learning, makes mathematics and science relevant to students, offers a wide range of high-paying career choices, and helps all students better navigate in a three-dimensional world. The National Center for Technological Literacy has played a role in K–12 engineering education advocacy, standards and assessment revisions, and curricula and professional development. Engineering standards have expanded from Massachusetts into the Next Generation Science Standards, creating new demand and opportunities for teacher professional development and student exposure to the engineering design process. While implementation challenges remain, the author remains optimistic that K–12 engineering is here to stay and proliferate.

THE MISSING CORE DISCIPLINE

We live in a human-made world. From the moment we wake up, until we lie down to sleep, we are immersed in technologies. The faucet we use to wash our face, the toothbrush we use to clean our teeth, the clothes we wear, the car we drive, our office or school, our home, and even the mattress we sleep on, all are the results of engineering processes. The water we drink has undergone an engineered purification process. The food we eat is the result of countless engineering technologies. If you are reading this inside of a building, take a moment to look around. Imagine how your environment would look without any human-made things. Almost nothing you see or experience would be present—no electricity, no chair, no walls, no book, and maybe no you. Without human-made pharmaceuticals and sanitation processes, your life expectancy would be 27 years.

We live in an engineered world. Engineering design creates the technologies that support our health, convenience, communication, transportation, living environments, and entertainment—our entire day-to-day life. We school our children so they can live a healthy, productive, and happy life. Our curriculum includes disciplines that prepare students to understand the physical and social world around them so they can be informed users, producers, and citizens. Social Studies prepares students to understand human relations and dynamics. Mathematics prepares them to think in quantitative manners to model processes and to calculate. Language Arts prepares them to communicate effectively and provides them with tools to learn other disciplines. Science prepares them to analyze and understand the physical world around them. Beginning in preschool, students learn about rocks, bugs, the water cycle, dinosaurs, rain forests, the human body, animals, stars and planets, chemical reactions, and physics principles. These are all important topics, but they only address a minute part of our everyday life.

The science curriculum focuses exclusively on the natural world, which arguably occupies less than 5% of our day-to-day activities. The classical K–12 curriculum essentially ignores the other 95%, the human-made world. Technology is not part of the mainstream curriculum. In most academic environments, the term technology is used to describe electronic devices. Most people do not understand that everything human made, other than some forms of art, is a technology. Although students spend years in school learning about the scientific inquiry process—the process scientists use to discover the natural world—they never learn the engineering design process, which is responsible for most of the things that support their day-to-day lives.

When I first realized this blatant omission, I was shocked. There are so many brilliant people working in K–12 education fields, so many higher education institutions that prepare educators and curricula, and so many committed government leaders who care about education. How, then, have we reached the ridiculous point where one may be considered illiterate if she does not know how many legs a grasshopper has, yet is not expected to understand how the water comes out of a faucet? Students in middle school can spend weeks learning how a volcano works and no time understanding how a car works. How often will they find themselves in a volcano?

Understanding the natural world around us is essential, but ignoring the other 95% is simply wrong. I was curious to learn the reason that the human-made world is not part of the curriculum. I discovered that one of the most significant moments in U.S. education was the publication of the report of the Committee of Ten in 1893. Charles Elliott, the president of Harvard University at the time, led this impressive group of education leaders. They used a quite rational approach to determine which disciplines students should be taught in K–12 schools in order to be prepared for productive work or college entrance. First they decided what students need to know by high school graduation; then they looked at the things that typical students learn at home; and, by subtraction, they decided what should be taught in schools to cover the difference. Fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science are typically not covered at home, so they made the list. Yet technology was left out. Think of the state of technology in 1893. Not only was it quite basic and simple, but most of it focused on farming. And since the majority of school children were living in agrarian areas, they were learning technology at home. Thus, the committee determined that it was not necessary to include technology in the regular curriculum. In addition, the committee was likely influenced by the bias of its leader. President Elliott was not a friend of applied knowledge. He closed Harvard’s engineering school because he deemed engineering to be too mundane for Harvard. The Committee of Ten report was used as a template to create textbooks and curricula, and thus technology and engineering were omitted. As technology advanced to become a major influence on our lives, the core curricula and textbooks never caught up.

There was a parallel, yet not as successful, movement to create manual schools, led by the C. M. Woodward, the Dean of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. This movement focused more on vocational education than on basic technological literacy for all. Industrial Arts emerged as an elective discipline in some schools in the early 1900s, but it also focused on the vocational side of technology. Industrial Arts’ aim was to train students to become technicians, such as builders and plumbers. Industrial Arts gradually evolved to Technology Education (Tech Ed), which leans closer to engineering, but in most cases it is still viewed as shop. Tech Ed teachers are not high in the prestige hierarchy in the K–12 academic world. Although in the early 1900s Tech Ed programs were developed by engineering schools, schools of education gradually took over the discipline. Many Tech Ed programs are now in colleges and universities that have no engineering programs. This trend inhibited growth in the field of technology education even as engineering and technology exploded in society. As a result, technology education has tended to focus on vocational kills rather than academic understanding. At present, technology education is either a small part of the student’s education or simply an elective. In tough economic times, it is one of the first areas to be cut from the budget. Thus only a small number of students are afforded an opportunity to learn even a limited part of the human-made world.

WHY SHOULD ENGINEERING BE PART OF THE CORE CURRICULUM?

Technological literacy is basic literacy

How can one claim to be literate if she does not understand how 95% of her environment works, or how it was made? Technological literacy is simply basic literacy. It is no less important than understanding US history or trigonometry. Understanding how an engineer designs is just as important as understanding how a scientist thinks.

Engineering promotes problem solving and project-based learning

The engineering design process starts by identifying a need or a problem. It follows an organized path to arrive at one or more solutions that satisfy the need or solve the problem. Problem-solving skills are far more valuable than many of the other skills that are the focus of our K–12 educational systems. I use my engineering training constantly to solve problems far removed from engineering, such as dealing with personnel issues or fundraising. Engineering provides a life skill that can be used in everyday life and in any occupation.

Engineering pulls other disciplines together, enabling students to work as a team to solve a problem they are passionate about. Imagine a second grade engineering team trying to solve the problem of how to keep their classroom pet bunny rabbit at the school, even though one of their classmates is allergic to it. This problem presents a welcome opportunity for the students to apply the skills they’ve gained from other disciplines to solve a problem they personally care about. In order to build an outdoor habitat for their rabbit, students have to use math to figure out the measurements of the hutch so the bunny can comfortably live in it and enter and exit, while not allowing the neighborhood raccoon to move in. They have to use science knowledge, including the fact that heat flows from hot to cold, while insulating the habitat so the bunny can be comfortable during the cold winter months. They even have to use art skills to make the habitat appealing. While doing this, they sharpen their team and collaborative learning abilities.

Engineering makes math and science relevant

Why do students lose interest in math and science in the middle school years? Some blame teacher quality and preparation. That may be a factor; however, I believe it is primarily because curriculum content is disconnected from the content of the students’ daily lives and interests. In the elementary school years, students love science because they learn about rocks, bugs, dinosaurs, and rain forests. These topics are exciting in elementary school, but quickly lose their appeal as the students reach puberty. In middle school, science begins to become more abstract: rocks become earth science, bugs become life science, and physical science deals with forces, energy, and other things that are invisible to students. These natural world topics are not so natural for children who live in inner-city, urban environments with few opportunities to travel and enjoy the natural world.

The lack of relevance syndrome continues at the college level. About half of the students that enter engineering school quit or transfer to liberal arts. Granted, some of these students are not adequately prepared in math and science and are challenged to the point where exit is the only solution, but many of them do quite well in math and science, yet they decide