2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 61: An Instructional Framework for the Integration of Engineering into Middle School Science Classrooms

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

Science teachers have recently been challenged to add engineering design into their classrooms to comply with the addition of engineering practices in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Taking advantage of this opportunity to promote engineering, an initial prototype of an instructional framework has been designed and revised called Argument Driven Engineering (ADE) that embeds a student argumentation process with the engineering design process and integrates NGSS science and engineering practices with disciplinary core ideas. The ADE framework was modeled after the existing Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI) framework currently used by over 2300 science teachers. Four engineering design tasks (EDTs) have been developed and are currently being implemented with 300 eighth grade students in two public middle schools to engage students in engineering through a sequence of activities that will give them an opportunity to: (a) engage in engineering design that explicitly incorporates scientific core ideas and mathematical principles; (b) use evidence-based argumentation to propose and critique design solutions; and (c) participate in team and individual sense-making through discourse and writing.

This paper describes the eight-stage ADE instructional framework co-developed by science and engineering educators, engineering faculty and middle school teachers using a design research methodology. Based on current research about how students learn both science and engineering and strongly influenced by social constructivist theories of learning, this framework was designed to integrate science concepts into the engineering design process with a focus on argumentation. Intentionally designed to help students use and develop evidence-based argumentation skills and repeated exposure to driving scientific concepts, we hope to move K-12 engineering education from typical “tinkering” activities to more realistic engineering design while simultaneously focusing on group collaboration and individual communication and writing skills.

The four EDTs align with NGSS performance expectations integrating disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) with science and engineering practices. The four EDTs all follow the ADE framework and require students to collaboratively propose, support, build, critique, revise, and communicate solutions to engineering challenges that ask them to design 1) a passive vaccine storage device, 2) a hand warmer for the homeless, 3) a highway crash safety barrier and 4) a biodiversity monitoring device. With an emphasis on what we learned from the 2008 Changing the Conversation study, all four EDTs explicitly show how engineers change the world and make it a better place to help encourage future engineering interest and broaden participation. The passive vaccine storage device EDT was inspired by a recent Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Challenge that asked designers to help solve the vaccine cold chain problem by developing a vaccine cooling solution that could keep vaccines between zero and eight degrees Celsius for 30 to 60 days without reliable electricity. The eight-stages of the passive vaccine storage device EDT will be used to help illustrate how the ADE framework can be implemented in practice. Preliminary results using iterative qualitative content analysis of student artifacts (pictures of group argumentation white boards and individual final reports) from the first-year implementation of this EDT will be presented.

Authors

Christina L. Baze http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0418-1772 University of Texas, Austin [biography]

Christina is a doctoral student in the STEM Education program at the University of Texas at Austin. After earning a B.S.Ed. in Secondary Education – Biology through the NAUTeach program at Northern Arizona University, she taught in several capacities in K-12 schools. Christina then began teaching community college students part-time. Through this position, she was encouraged to earn her Master of Arts in Science Teaching, also at Northern Arizona University. During this time, Christina discovered a love for research, prompting her to pursue a Ph.D. She is a recipient of both a Graduate School Recruitment Fellowship and a Texas New Scholar’s Fellowship. She is a member of the National Science Teachers Association, and currently serves as the STEM Education representative to the Graduate Student Assembly at UT.
Dr. Todd L. Hutner University of Texas, Austin
Dr. Richard H. Crawford P.E. University of Texas at Austin [biography]

Dr. Richard H. Crawford is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and is the Temple Foundation Endowed Faculty Fellow No. 3. He is also Director of the Design Projects program in Mechanical Engineering. He received his BSME from Louisiana State University in 1982, and his MSME in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1989, both from Purdue University. He teaches mechanical engineering design and geometry modeling for design. Dr. Crawford’s research interests span topics in computer-aided mechanical design and design theory and methodology. Dr. Crawford is co-founder of the DTEACh program, a ”Design Technology” program for K-12, and is active on the faculty of the UTeachEngineering program that seeks to educate teachers of high school engineering.
Dr. Victor Sampson University of Texas, Austin [biography]

Associate Professor of STEM Education
Director of the Center for STEM Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Mr. Lawrence Chu [biography]

Lawrence Chu is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin studying STEM Education. His research interests include engineering integration in secondary science classes, science assessment development, and educational program evaluation.
Dr. Stephanie Rivale University of Texas, Austin [biography]

Stephanie Rivale is a research faculty member at the Center for STEM Education at the University of Texas. She received her Ph.D. in STEM Education at the University of Texas. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Rochester and her M.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Colorado. She has collaborated on engineering education research with both the VaNTH Engineering Research Center, UTeachEngineering, and the TEAMS Program at the University of Boulder. Dr. Rivale’s research uses recent advances in our understanding of how people learn to evaluate and improve student learning in college and K-12 engineering classrooms. Her work also focuses on improving access and equity for women and students of color in STEM fields.
Hannah Smith Brooks University of Texas, Austin [biography]

Hannah Brooks is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on promoting equitable access through collaboration and instructional design. She is also interested in improving teacher education programs in the sciences by studying how teachers plan and structure learning using various methods. She has a BA in Biology and a M.Ed. in middle and secondary instruction from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Her interests developed during her time in the science classroom, having worked in both comprehensive and early college high schools. Leadership experiences at the school and county levels challenged her to study how teachers and students interact during learning. She has presented at various national and regional conferences, with work appearing in The Science Teacher and on TeachEngineering.com, and has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

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Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology
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