Page 153 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

138 STANDARDS FOR K–12 ENGINEERING EDUCATION?

essential to engineering (e.g., for helping engineers understand why things work, such as how
airplanes fly, so that they can be improved). They can also describe a wide variety of engineering
professions and recognize that men and women from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds have
chosen to be engineers.
Grades 9–12: Students at the high school level will be able to express a richer sense of the
relationships linking technology and science. They can give examples of how technological problems
sometimes create a demand for new scientific knowledge and how new technologies make it possible
for scientists to extend their research in new ways or to undertake entirely new lines of research.
Most important, they can cite modern examples of the complementary relationship between science
and technology in fields such as medical research and nanotechnology, and they can describe the
educational pathway that individuals must follow if they choose to pursue careers in science or
engineering.

Skill Sets

Although many skills contribute to a person’s capability to engage in engineering design, we have
identified the following skill sets as the most essential: (4) designing under constraint; (5) using tools and
materials; and (6) mathematical reasoning. Although this brief section does not define levels of skill
performance, a major goal of this study will be to specify skill levels and figure out how teachers can
determine their students’ skill levels through embedded assessments.

4. Designing under constraint is the ability to apply all of the steps of the engineering design process in
real-world contexts.
Grades K–4: Elementary school students can learn that the problem-definition phase of engineering
design includes identifying desired characteristics of the solution (criteria), as well as limits
(constraints). Young children can learn about constraints such as safety, time, cost, school policy,
space, availability of materials, and other realities that restrict possible solutions. Teachers can point
out that adults also face constraints when they design things and that the real challenge, for adults and
children, is to devise solutions that achieve good results in spite of the restrictions. However,
elementary students should not be faced with problems that involve too many variables at one time.
When generating possible solutions young children have a tendency to go with their first idea.
Learning to suspend judgment until other ideas for solving a problem have been generated can be
very challenging for elementary students but is a very important element of the decision-making
process.
Grades 5–8: Middle school students should develop skill in defining problems in which there may be
competing interests and values. They should learn to use brainstorming as a means of generating
diverse solutions and to develop analytical tools for choosing among possible ideas, even when the
data are unclear or incomplete. One of the most important tools they should learn to use is the idea of
trade-offs—designs that are best in one respect (safety or ease of use, for example) but may be
inferior in other ways (cost or appearance). The students should be able to justify decisions in terms
of trade-offs and acknowledge that other individuals may have different, also justifiable solutions to
the same problem. Middle school students should also have experience in testing prototypes as a way
of transforming ideas into practical solutions. Finally, they should have experiences in which they
communicate their ideas using drawings and simple models, receive feedback on their ideas, and then
redesign their solutions in light of that feedback.
Grades 9–12: High school students should have opportunities to define solvable problems, with
clearly identified criteria and constraints, in situations that may at first seem chaotic. Once a solvable
problem is defined and the students have brainstormed alternative solutions, they should be able to

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