Page 36 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

3

Leveraging Existing Standards to Improve

K–12 Engineering Education

In Chapter 2, the committee concluded that, although it is theoretically feasible to develop
content standards for K–12 engineering education, there would be little value in doing so at this
time. In this chapter, the committee describes two ways that standards in other subjects can be
leveraged to boost the presence and improve the quality and consistency of K–12 engineering
education in the United States. These complementary approaches, “infusion” and “mapping,”
involve working with existing educational standards at the national and state levels. If used
widely and successfully, these complementary approaches could set the stage for a recon-
sideration of the need for traditional standards for K–12 engineering, but they have value even if
such standards are never developed. For infusion and mapping to have the most impact, there
must first be a consensus on the core ideas in engineering. Fortunately, although formal agree-
ment on the most important ideas has not yet been achieved, the groundwork for it has been laid
(Box 3-1).
1

The Infusion Approach

In the context of standards and this report, infusion means including the learning goals of one
discipline—in this case engineering—in educational standards for another discipline. Infusion
would take advantage of times when standards were being revised to reinforce or articulate
connections between ideas in the standards and engineering. Successful infusion would mean:
(1) engineering content would be more prominent in standards for science, technology, and
mathematics; (2) the relationship between engineering and other STEM disciplines would be
clearer; and (3) engineering would be included in student assessments based on the standards.
Existing national and state standards documents present logical opportunities to infuse
engineering learning goals. Thus they provide a basis for including engineering in curricula,
instruction, assessment, and professional development, which will help establish engineering as a
legitimate subject in K–12 education. This does not mean that school systems would suddenly
require engineering for graduation or that there would be a widespread demand for engineering
courses and stand-alone engineering standards. However, infusion would be a step toward put-
ting engineering on a par with other school subjects in the eyes of students, educators, and the

1
For additional discussion of core ideas, see Chapter 4.

23

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.