Engineering Design Challenges in High School STEM Courses: A Compilation of Invited Position Papers

Since its initial funding by the National Science Foundation in 2004, the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE) has worked to understand the infusion of engineering design experiences into the high school setting. Over the years, an increasing number of educators and professional groups have participated in the expanding initiative seeking to acquaint all students with engineering design. While there is strong support for providing students with engineering design experiences in their high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, the lack of consensus on purposes and strategies has become increasingly apparent as the work continues. In February, 2011, NCETE sought position statements from a small number of engineering educators, cognitive scientists, instructional designers, and professional development providers who have been engaged in long-term efforts to provide students with engineering design experiences in their high school STEM courses. Each of these experienced professionals was asked to provide brief descriptions of principles or guidelines that they consider to be most important in promoting effective infusion of authentic engineering design challenges into STEM courses for all high school students. This publication contains the following papers: (1) Design Problems for Secondary Students (David H. Jonassen); (2) Infusing Engineering Design into High School STEM Courses (Morgan Hynes, Merredith Portsmore, Emily Dare, Elissa Milto, Chris Rogers, and David Hammer); (3) Integrating Engineering Design Challenges into Secondary STEM Education (Ronald L. Carr and Johannes Strobel); (4) Design Principles for High School Engineering Design Challenges: Experiences from High School Science Classrooms (Christian Schunn); (5) Engineering Design Challenges in a Science Curriculum (Arthur Eisenkraft); and (6) A Possible Pathway for High School Science in a STEM World (Cary Sneider). (Individual papers contain figures, references and appendices.)