Page 107 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

92 STANDARDS FOR K–12 ENGINEERING EDUCATION?

The OBE approach is apparent in the headings of all standards listings. Let us take, for example,
Learning Outcomes 1 in the Civil Engineering Standards: Technology, Society and the
Environment. The Table of Standards is preceded by the following sentence: “The learner is
able to demonstrate (my italics) an awareness and understanding of the interrelationship between
Technology, society and the environment.” The table itself is headed by the words: “We know
this when the learner is able to:” and then, in the table, we find words such as “describe,”
“explain,” “discuss,” “predict,” “respond to,” “identify,” “compare,” “analyze,” and “evaluate.”
All of these terms are behavioral in nature. Even though the standard itself expresses an internal
quality of the learner, such as knowing or understanding, the qualities are consistently expressed
in behavioral terms.

We find this approach throughout the list following Learning Outcomes 2. The Technological
Process; Learning Outcomes 3. Knowledge and Understanding; and Learning Outcomes 4.
Application of Knowledge. The Standards for Electrical Technology are divided into the same
four Learning Outcomes. The exact content of these, of course, is different from the Civil
Engineering Outcomes, but we find the same behavioral terms, “describe,” “identify,” and so on.
The same holds true for the third program, Mechanical Technologies, and the fourth program,
Engineering Graphics and Design.

The consistency with which the South African standards have been formulated in behavioral
terms is even more striking when compared to standards in the other non-U.S. countries in this
study. The standards in Hamburg, Germany, are probably the closest to the South African OBE
approach. The Hamburg standards are interesting because they include a wide variety of
behavioral terms, which even serve as an ordering principle for the standards; the standards are
arranged in a table with these headings: “name,” “arrange,” “describe,” “realize,” “explain,”
“solve,” “measure,” “sketch,” “draw,” “calculate,” “evaluate,” “estimate,” “relate,” “design,”
“construct,” “develop,” “test,” “optimize,” and “choose.” These terms are not atypical for
Germany, as we can see by comparing the Hamburg and Thuringia standards (for information
technology). However, in Thuringia they are not used as a principle for arranging all of the
standards, as they are in the Hamburg materials.

In the Australian standards, too, we see a strong preference for behavioral terms, “use,”
“investigate,” “optimize,” “manage,” and so on. But in the Australian materials, not all of the
terms are behavioral. Many standards are expressed in terms of “understand” and “recognize,”
which are considerably less behavior-oriented than the terms in the South African materials.

The UK standards, as formulated by the QCA, have an even stronger bias toward the term
“understand,” although we also find the terms “investigate,” “select,” “read,” “interpret,” and
“generate,” which are of a more behavioral type. In the elaboration by the commercial
assessment bodies we again find more behavioral terms. In the AQA materials we find, for
instance, a Unit on Design and Graphical Communication (for the A2). The table containing the
standards is headed by the words: “At this level all candidates have:” followed by “produced,”
“generated,” “demonstrated,” “explained,” and the like. The same holds true for other units,
such as Engineered Products and Application of Technology. In the Edexcel materials (Award-
level), we find different unit names (1. Engineering Materials, Processes and Techniques; 2. The
Role of the Engineer; 3. Principles of Design, Planning and Prototyping; 4. Applied Engineering

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