Page 156 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

APPENDIX B 141

their own teams are like those of scientists and engineers, in that individuals with different
capabilities and talents combine their efforts to arrive at a better solution as a team than they could as
individuals.
Grades 5–8: Middle school students should be aware that most of the work of engineers involves
working as a member of a team. In addition, one of the advantages of teams is that they may include
a wide diversity of talents and points of view from women and men of various social and ethnic
backgrounds with different interests, capabilities, and motivations. Evidence of effective teamwork
might include full participation with other students on teams, the ability to communicate ideas clearly,
but also active listening to teammates and a willingness to work with widely diverse individuals.
Grades 9–12: High school students should move to higher levels of critical and creative thinking
through progressively more demanding design and technology teamwork. In addition to team-
building skills mentioned above, high school students should show evidence that they recognize the
advantages of the combination of teamwork and individual effort, that they focus on the quality of
work by the entire team, and that they are willing to engage and assist weaker members of their team.
9. Concern for the societal and environmental impacts of technology involves personal values as well
as knowledge and skills.
Grades K–5: Elementary school students are capable of realizing that because of our ability to invent
tools, materials, and processes, we humans have an enormous effect on the lives of other living
things. New or improved technologies can have both positive and negative impacts. Consequently,
decisions involving technology should be made with possible societal and environmental impacts in
mind.
Grades 5–8: At the middle school level students should show evidence of a more sophisticated
understanding of the pros and cons of technological changes. On the positive side, transportation,
communications, nutrition, sanitation, health care, entertainment, and other technologies give large
numbers of people today the goods and services that once were luxuries enjoyed only by the wealthy.
However, these benefits are not equally available to everyone. Furthermore, technological changes
often have side effects that were not anticipated. For example, the first pioneering engineers who
developed automobiles did not realize that this invention would cause tens of thousands of deaths per
year as the speed of cars increased. Students’ decision-making should show evidence that they are
attempting to take possible societal and environmental impacts into account.
Grades 9–12: High school students should be able to conduct risk analyses of technological
innovations to minimize the likelihood of unwanted side effects of a new technology by considering
such questions as: What alternative ways are there to achieve the same ends, and how do the
alternatives compare to the plan being put forward? Who benefits and who suffers? What are the
financial and social costs, do they change over time, and who bears them? What are the risks
associated with using (or not using) the new technology, how serious are they, and who is in
jeopardy? What human, material, and energy resources will be needed to build, install, operate,
maintain, and replace the new technology, and where will they come from? How will the new
technology and its waste products be disposed of and at what cost? Students should also be aware
that risk can be reduced in a variety of ways: overdesign, redundancy, fail-safe designs, more research
ahead of time, more controls, etc. They should also come to recognize that the cost of such
precautions may become prohibitive.

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