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The goal of this work was to explore ways, within an existing engineering curriculum, to address the culture of disengagement by challenging the dominant engineering mindset. We conducted Collaborative Action Research to explore the implementation of Transformative Learning pedagogies in a Human-Centered Design context to understand how students make meaning of engineering contexts that involve unique sociotechnical considerations. Findings suggest that introducing students to such contexts allows them to use other points of view which can challenge the dominant engineering mindset and promote openness to the social nature of engineering, resulting in a more informed understanding of the nature of engineering overall. Furthermore, adopting Transformative Learning Theory as a framework for understanding and interpreting how the points of view students utilize can address the culture of disengagement by challenging the dominant engineering mindset. A framework connecting students' points of view to their understanding of the nature of engineering is provided.

Computational thinking requires high cognitive load as students work to manage multiple tasks in their problem-solving environment. Through research in K-2 classrooms on computational thinking, we noticed that students lack the representational fluency needed to move from one form to another--such as moving from physical to more abstract representations. Therefore, the following research question was studied: How do second-grade students use and translate among representations to solve computational thinking tasks using the robot mouse game? To address this, we employed a task-based interview approach with three second-grade students who were engaged in four computational thinking tasks using the Code and Go Robot Mouse Coding Activity Set developed by Learning Resources. Through four clinical tasks involving the robot mouse, students solved puzzles set up to force them to make particular representational translations. Each translation involved a level of cognitive complexity the students needed to manage to successfully complete the task. We found that students translated between many different representations using concrete representations to ease translations, language as a scaffold between translations, and embodied movements as representations or to assist with translation. Furthermore, the levels of representational maturity showed by the students varied with the difficulty of the task, and the spatial orientation was particularly difficult for them. These results provide important insights into how learners may develop their ability to engage with abstract representations that will be part of future practices associated with activities in science, mathematics, engineering, and computational thinking.

This paper presents a design-based research project undertaken to test and implement an interest-based engineering challenges framework for pre-college students. This work is motivated by the need for innovative engineering education practices in pre-college settings, and making engineering more inclusive for people from diverse backgrounds. The design-based research methodology can be challenging to implement as it comprises of multiple, cyclical research activities that provide challenges in documenting and communicating the larger study's progress. This paper presents findings from this continuously evolving study, and also the design and implementation of this design-based research at roughly the halfway point for a four-year study. Each of the consequent versions scaffold to answer the broader research questions of the study pertaining to: engineering appealing to students' personal interests, empowering underrepresented groups to find meaningful connections to engineering, leading more authentic engagement in engineering and design practices, and improving students' attitudes and perception of engineering.

The Maker Movement inspires people to express their creativity by making things in a self-directed and, often, collaborative learning endeavor. The excitement of the movement has spurred the development of various types of Makerspaces across the United States and the World to further enable people to "make" and innovate. The education community has recognized the potential for Makerspaces as learning environments that can foster interdisciplinary collaboration and self-directed learning. As such, there is much excitement to create Makerspaces within K-12 schools, libraries, colleges and universities. However, contrary to the formal design process used to build many school facilities, successful grass-roots makerspaces are most often created when those with like-minded interests come together and adapt the building around them to fit their needs. The research in this paper focuses on the design of such spaces by applying the environmental preferences predictors psychology construct. The study surveyed 276 students from art and design, engineering, and liberal arts majors to better understand their preferences as related to images of eight different Makerspaces. The results are broken down by the four predictors of preference, major, and gender. The results highlight differences among the images along with design considerations for creating spaces that welcome a broader audience.

Product archaeology as an educational approach asks engineering students to consider and explore the broader societal and global impacts of a product's manufacturing, distribution, use, and disposal on people, economics, and the environment. This study examined the impact of product archaeology in a project-based engineering design course on student attitudes and perceptions about engineering and abilities to extend and refine knowledge about broader contexts. Two design scenarios were created: one related to dental hygiene and one related to vaccination delivery. Design scenarios were used to (1) assess knowledge of broader contexts, and (2) test variability of student responses across different contextual situations. Results from pre- to post-surveying revealed improved student perceptions of knowledge of broader contexts. Significant differences were observed between the two design scenarios. The findings support the assumption that different design scenarios elicit consideration of different contexts and design scenarios can be constructed to target specific contextual considerations.

This paper reports on research investigating six middle school teachers without engineering degrees as they taught an engineering unit on the engineering design process. Videotaped classroom sessions and teacher interviews were analyzed to understand the subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge the teachers used and developed as they introduced the eight steps of the engineering design process (from content standards for the state of Massachusetts, USA). The teachers demonstrated wide-ranging knowledge of the engineering design process, and this paper describes two of the steps the teachers showed a more sophisticated understanding--constructing a prototype and redesigning. Examples from the teachers illustrate strengths that can be built upon as well as some areas for further development.

This paper presents a design-based research project undertaken to test and implement an interest-based engineering challenges framework for pre-college students. This work is motivated by the need for innovative engineering education practices in pre-college settings, and making engineering more inclusive for people from diverse backgrounds. The design-based research methodology can be challenging to implement as it comprises of multiple, cyclical research activities that provide challenges in documenting and communicating the larger study's progress. This paper presents findings from this continuously evolving study, and also the design and implementation of this design-based research at roughly the halfway point for a four-year study. Each of the consequent versions scaffold to answer the broader research questions of the study pertaining to: engineering appealing to students' personal interests, empowering underrepresented groups to find meaningful connections to engineering, leading more authentic engagement in engineering and design practices, and improving students' attitudes and perception of engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nations throughout the world have recognized the importance of having a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) competent workforce in today's highly competitive and technical economy. As such, the past fifteen years have seen a sharp rise in introducing pre-college (P-12) students to engineering and engaging them in learning engineering principles. Policy decisions to include engineering in national curriculum and standards have not been informed by as rich a body of research as subjects such as mathematics and science; however, research on P-12 engineering education is on the rise. This paper presents a systematic review of the engineering education research in P-12 published in journals from 2000-2015. A systematic review follows a set of replicable, detailed procedures that describe how the articles were selected, reviewed, and analysed. The results of this review included 218 peer-reviewed journal articles. The paper details the kinds of research and research questions these papers focused on, and synthesizes and discusses findings of across different topics, and proposes research topics ripe for further work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging a representatively diverse (across class, race, gender, and cultural lines) population in a future of engineering continues to be a struggle for many countries. This paper presents a study from the U.S. context, where racial and ethnic minorities and women are significantly underrepresented in engineering. The interview study asked diverse pre-college students about their personal and career interests and how they defined engineering. These responses were coded using Holland's Career Theory framework of six interest dimensions (realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional) to categorize students' personal and career interests to see how they may or may not correspond to their understandings of what interests an engineering future may appeal to. The results illustrate that the students' personal interests map to the full spectrum of Holland's dimensions. However, students' understandings of engineering map to a more stereotypical view of engineering that does not always match to their personal interests. The paper argues for introducing engineering in ways that highlight how engineering pervades a wide array of domains and interest areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Product archaeology as an educational approach asks engineering students to consider and explore the broader societal and global impacts of a product's manufacturing, distribution, use, and disposal on people, economics, and the environment. This study examined the impact of product archaeology in a project-based engineering design course on student attitudes and perceptions about engineering and abilities to extend and refine knowledge about broader contexts. Two design scenarios were created: one related to dental hygiene and one related to vaccination delivery. Design scenarios were used to (1) assess knowledge of broader contexts, and (2) test variability of student responses across different contextual situations. Results from pre- to post-surveying revealed improved student perceptions of knowledge of broader contexts. Significant differences were observed between the two design scenarios. The findings support the assumption that different design scenarios elicit consideration of different contexts and design scenarios can be constructed to target specific contextual considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research outlined in this paper looks at a teacher professional development program designed designed to prepare middle school teachers to teach an after school engineering/technology LEGO™ robotics unit. Thirteen Massachusetts public middle-school teachers participated in a summer professional development programme during the first two weeks of August 2005. Many of these teachers had not had any formal training in teaching engineering/technology. This paper looks at aspects of the professional development course that worked and those that did not by considering confidence surveys, researcher observations and teacher interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]