Page 104 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

APPENDIX B 89

Since 1992, there have been three types of baccalauréat—a general, a professional, and a
technological baccalauréat. The general and technological baccalauréat have a common first
year in which students are given an orientation that helps them choose between continuing
toward the general bac or working toward the technological bac. Within the general
baccalauréat, there is a scientific stream (série scientifique) that focuses on the natural sciences
but has variants that focus on engineering (e.g., the série scientifique sciences de l’ingénieur).

In the baccalauréat technologique, there is a variant called the série sciences et technologies
industrielles, which is currently in a process of renewal. The purpose of the renovation is both to
make the content more up-to-date and to increase the number of students in academic
engineering education by creating more options for studying engineering sciences after this série.
In any case, students have to take a classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles (CPGE) before they
can enter the grand école, where they will study engineering at university level. These classes
are mainly in science and math and do not have much engineering content.

Most pupils choose the baccalauréat general. In the série scientifique the subjects in the schedule
are French language, math, physics and chemistry, earth and life sciences, engineering sciences,
biology/ecology, history and geography, two foreign languages, philosophy, and physical
education. In the série sciences et technologies industrielles in the baccalauréat technologique,
the list of subjects includes French language, history and geography, math, one foreign language,
philosophy, and physical education, but also constructions, industrial systems and techniques,
physics and applied physics (in the specializations of mechanical, civil, energy and materials
engineering), and electronics (in the specialization electronics engineering). In terms of hours,
the scientific and engineering subjects take up a substantial part of the schedule.

The Ministry of Education provides standards for the pre-university engineering education
described above. The standards include an extensive list of acquired capabilities (compétences
attendues) for the themes of Functional Analysis of Products, Technological Solutions
Associated with Functions, Introduction to State and Behavior of Systems, and Realizing a Mini-
project. For each subtheme there is also a list of knowledges (savoirs), related to the capabilities,
which are distributed over four levels. No effort is made to indicate progress within a capability
or knowledge. There are only different capabilities for different levels (see Table 5 for a sample
of standards).

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