Page 146 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

APPENDIX B 131

A second strategy would be to conduct case studies of successful implementations of engineering
standards. For example, the State of Massachusetts has a network of school district teams to help
implement state technology/engineering standards at the district level. These teams share information
about their challenges and successes and borrow ideas from each other. A recently developed curriculum,
Engineering is Elementary, provides materials that can be integrated with reading and social studies
lessons at the elementary level, along with science learning activities. Several evaluation studies of this
curriculum have been conducted. New Jersey has had a very active professional development program
for teachers for several years focused on technological design. Project Lead the Way is a rigorous high
school engineering program that has been implemented in more than 1,000 high schools nationwide.
These and other educational projects should be reviewed for lessons on integrating engineering into the
curriculum for all students and on how standards can support those efforts.

A third strategy would be to develop a small set of big ideas that we want students to understand at a deep
level, to remember for many years after leaving high school, and to find useful in everyday life. These
big ideas would provide guidelines for deciding what to include and what to exclude from the standards.
The practice of starting with big ideas to establish a framework is not new (McCarthy and Comfort,
1993). However, it has gained recent attention in two influential publications from the National Research
Council (Duschl et al., 2007; Michaels et al., 2008). To avoid repeating past mistakes, it will be
important that the big ideas in engineering be complementary to core subjects so practitioners view them
as central ideas and not add-ons. For example, engineering can be used to illustrate why science is
important and how engineering design problems can help students understand and apply physical, life,
Earth and space science concepts. Engineering problems can also engage students in solving problems
that can sharpen their mathematical abilities.

Establishing a common language for science and mathematics educators when discussing engineering
would be challenging, but it could be done. The next step would be to vet the list of big ideas, either by
consulting with engineers, educators, and other experts, researching the literature on educational research,
or making international comparisons.

Table 6 offers a recommendation for big ideas in three dimensions of engineering education: critical
knowledge about the engineering design process, skill sets that enable students to apply the process, and
habits of mind that frame the way students approach problematic situations. The meaning of these big
ideas and how they might play out at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels is elaborated
in Appendix B, p. 136.

Table 6. A Vision of Engineering Standards in Terms of Big Ideas

Knowledge 1. Engineering design is an approach to solving problems or achieving goals.

2. Technology is a fundamental attribute of human culture.
3. Science and engineering differ in terms of goals, processes, and products.
Skills 4. Designing under constraint.
5. Using tools and materials.

6. Mathematical reasoning.
Habits of Mind 7. Systems thinking.
8. Desire to encourage and support effective teamwork.

9. Concern for the societal and environmental impacts of technology.

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