Page 84 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

APPENDIX B 69

education have argued for the engineering design process as the avenue for integration (Lewis,
2005; Wicklein, 2006). Thus, the discussion about integrating engineering design into
technology education has largely centered on process or “problem solving and the application of
scientific understanding to a given task” (Hill and Anning, 2001, p. 118). Many instructors have
taught engineering design problem solving by implementing a prescriptive, step-by-step
approach, typically through a design process model. However, the prescriptive approach to
teaching design has been increasingly criticized because it contradicts both expert and novice
designers’ approaches to the problem solving and design process (Lewis et al., 1998; Mawson,
2003; Welch, 1999; Williams, 2000).
Based on the evidence of the importance of conceptual knowledge in expert design
cognition, the lack of a defined content base and the focus on procedural knowledge raises
concerns. This same argument has been thoroughly discussed in mathematics, where a focus on
process does not always lead to conceptual learning (Eisenhart et al., 1993; Rittle-Johnson and
Alibali, 1999; Rittle-Johnson et al., 2001). For example, Antony (1996) argued that teachers
“may be lulled into a false sense of security by providing students with numerous investigations,
open-ended problem-solving experiences, and hands-on activities with the expectations that
students are successfully constructing knowledge from these experiences” (p. 351). The crucial
importance of conceptual learning calls into question educational programs that try “to focus on
procedural knowledge such as problem solving or design, while assuming that the domain and
context within which this takes place are either irrelevant or at best secondary” (McCormick,
1997, p. 149).

In addition, the effectiveness of teacher professional development has been shown to
depend on a defined content base. As Guskey (2003) stated, enabling “teachers to understand
more deeply the content they teach and the ways students learn that content appears to be a vital
dimension of effective professional development” (p. 749). Desimone et al. (2002) agreed,
arguing that high quality professional development must include “a focus on content and how
students learn content, in-depth” (p. 82). Similarly, Supovitz and Turner (2000) outlined
components of high quality science education professional development and concluded that
focusing on subject-matter knowledge and deepening teachers’ content skills were critical.
Specific to engineering professional development, one key finding of Daugherty’s (2008) study
on secondary level, engineering-focused professional development was that the content
dimension was either ill-defined or largely missing. The primary focus was on the process
dimensions of engineering rather than on engineering content or concepts.

Content and Conceptual Learning
Learning can be defined as the social construction of knowledge. Individuals construct
schemata, or knowledge structures, through experience and instruction. Schemata impact the
learning of new concepts or theories, as well as “give experts in a domain the ability to solve
problems quickly” (McCormick, 1997, p. 148). Concepts form the basis of conceptual
knowledge, which is “formed in memory by the integrated storage of meaningful dimensions
selected from known examples and the connecting of this entity in a given domain of
information” (Tennyson and Cocchiarella, 1986, p. 41). Unlike declarative knowledge,
conceptual knowledge requires an understanding of the operational structure of something and
how it relates to associated concepts. A concept can be defined as “an abstract label that
encompasses an array of diverse instances deemed to be related” (Sigel, 1983, p. 242). Similarly,

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