Page 130 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

APPENDIX B 115

The prospect of a next generation of educational standards means there may be an opportunity to integrate
technology and engineering standards. However, there is still no universal agreement on the meaning of
“technology” and “engineering,” let alone on a vision for how these subjects can, or should, be integrated
into our K–12 system. Given the current call for fewer, clearer, higher standards and the difficulty of
adding entirely new courses of study, especially at the high school level, it is unlikely that a separate set
of standards for technology or engineering would be widely adopted by the states. Consequently, our best
bet is to develop a clear, coherent vision of exemplary standards in technology and engineering and then
consider how they might fit into traditional K–12 subjects.

Developing a vision for fewer, clearer, higher engineering standards could be undertaken in a number of
ways. One approach would be to convene a workshop of engineers, educators, and experts in related
fields to determine the most important concepts and abilities that everyone needs to be an effective
citizen, worker, and/or consumer. That was the approach in chapters 3 and 8 of SFAA in the 1980s, and it
is the approach being taken now by the team writing a framework for technological literacy for the
National Assessment of Educational Progress.

A second approach would be to comb the international literature, using sources such as Technology’s
Challenge to Science Education (Layton, 1993), which chronicles the evolution of technology in the
national curriculum of England and Wales, and the series Innovations in Science and Technology
Education (UNESCO, Volumes I–VIII, 1986–2003), which describe similar efforts in many
industrialized and developing nations. One purpose of this search would be to determine whether or not
there is an existence proof for national standards that fully integrate technology and engineering into core
subjects, and if so, what its characteristics are.

A third approach is to start with the standards that already exist in the United States and imagine how they
might be shaped in their next iteration so that they are perceived by practitioners as essential to core
subjects. Ideally, all three methods could be “triangulated” to produce a set of optimal engineering
standards.

Given limited time, this paper will skim the surface of the third approach by providing an overview of
engineering standards in current frameworks and suggesting a potential approach to synthesizing earlier
efforts. We turn first to definitions of terms used in educational contexts.

Definitions of Technology and Engineering Education

SFAA (AAAS, 1990) was the first major document to provide a broad vision for science education that
included a major role for technology and engineering. These terms were defined as follows:

In the broadest sense, technology extends our abilities to change the world: to cut, shape, or put
together materials; to move things from one place to another; to reach farther with our hands, voices,
and senses. We use technology to try to change the world to suit us better. The changes may relate to
survival needs such as food, shelter, or defense, or they may relate to human aspirations such as
knowledge, art, or control. But the results of changing the world are often complicated and
unpredictable. They can include unexpected benefits, unexpected costs, and unexpected risks—any
of which may fall on different social groups at different times. Anticipating the effects of technology
is therefore as important as advancing its capabilities. . . .

Engineering, the systematic application of scientific knowledge in developing and applying
technology, has grown from a craft to become a science in itself. Scientific knowledge provides a

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