Page 111 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

96 STANDARDS FOR K–12 ENGINEERING EDUCATION?

3.3 Level of Detail
The non-U.S. standards in our sample differ substantially in their level of detail.

In the Hamburg materials, the description of standards is very concise—simply a list of 25
“Operators” combined with a short description of three levels. Each operator is defined in one
sentence. The description of the Australian standards, too, has little detail. The Western
Australia standards are described in one sentence each, and the nine standards are ordered in four
“Outcomes.” The New South Wales standards are even shorter: five standards with a one-
sentence description of each. The twelve compulsory and seven elective Victoria standards are
also described in a short sentence for each.

The French material is more elaborate and more detailed. Ten tables describe the standards, each
of which is subdivided into three to six elements for the competences and seven to ten elements
for related knowledge. In addition, there are four levels for each main category of standards.
The U.K. material is concise in describing end-level standards (a short list of 11 standards, each
of which is described in a short sentence with a few bullets to indicate elements in the standard),
but the elaborations in the AQA and Edexcel materials include more detailed descriptions (each
standard is elaborated for three bands, or levels).

The South African materials contain the most detailed descriptions. The materials of Civil
Technology include 30 standards with different descriptions for each of the three grades and an
equal number of content/contexts descriptions for the attainment of each standard.

Detailed and elaborate standards and concise, short standards both have pros and cons. Very
detailed, elaborate standards leave little room for curriculum developers to put their own stamp
on the material to be learned. There are so many standards that one can only decide how to
arrange them in a way that makes sense to teachers and learners, but one has few choices in
terms of content.

More concise descriptions offer more opportunities for different ways of elaborating the
standards in different directions. However, this is only an advantage if teachers have the
necessary capabilities to elaborate on them in a sophisticated way. In the past decade, the U.K.
has moved back and forth between more and less detailed descriptions of its standards for
“Design and Technology” education in response to the tension between the advantage of having
open standards, which allows good schools to develop excellent practices, and short descriptions
of standards that provide more direction for weaker schools to help them develop good practices.

3.4 Capabilities and Contexts
Recent educational theories (constructivism, concept-context approach) suggest that learning
should take place in practical contexts. The theories are based on the principle that by learning
in different contexts, the learner gradually develops a generic level of knowledge and skills.
This contrasts with the view that concepts and capabilities can be learned independent of context
and directly at an abstract level. The new approaches are reflected in some of the non-U.S.
standards in our sample, in which a distinction is made between the content of what is to be
learned and the contexts in which that content is to be learned and/or applied.

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.