Engineering-Oriented curriculum to high school gifted students: A case of paper mechanism.

The STEAM interdisciplinary integrated-thematic curriculum with engineering design is the main concept of the 12-year basic education curricula of Technology. This research is based on the engineering design orientation as a teaching strategy, developing project for paper mechanism, and implementing Living Technology courses for gifted high school students in Taiwan to test the teaching effectiveness. In the project, students need to integrate the theory, using engineering design process methods, performing work prediction and evaluation, prototyping experiments and trial work, and finally optimizing the work and improving the design. The results of the present study facilitate us get deeper understanding of the practical implementation and engineering thinking skills of gifted students. Suggestions based on the results were generated to improve the future Living Technology curriculum. The findings in this study serve as a reference for the future design, development, and implementation of STEAM curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]