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This position paper is motivated by recent educational reform efforts that urge the integration of engineering in science education. We argue that it is plausible and beneficial to integrate engineering into formal K-12 science education. We illustrate how current literature, though often implicitly, discusses this integration from a pedagogical, e...
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... diverse, the integration models have to reflect the nature of engineering but also be transferable to classroom practices. In Table 3, we present several divergent models that emerged from a synthesis of articles published in NSTA's teacher journals (Purzer, 2018;Purzer & Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019). These models can be categorized under two main headings in alignment with the nature of engineering: new design and re-design in engineering. ...Context 2
... integration models presented in Table 3 showcase the multi-faceted nature of engineering, with dimensions resembling pragmatic innovation (new design) and scientific approach (re-design). The different emphasis areas in engineering practices required to solve different types of problems would likely have implications on the learning outcomes of the students. ...Similar publications
Abstract This commentary aims to discuss an overarching boundary crossing framework under which integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) pedagogy can be conceptualized. Four potential learning dialogical processes for boundary crossing are presented and used as the main theoretical construct for the discussion. A proposal of...
Citations
... Likewise, they are concretized with two general characteristics in the resolution process: (1) the process as a reflective practice; and (2) the process as an iterative process. All this is accompanied by decision-making with dialog in teamwork and with the rest of the teams (National Research Council, 2012; Dasgupta et al., 2019;Purzer and Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019;Ortiz-Revilla et al., 2020). Below, we explain each of the stages of STEM activity in Figure 2. ...
... As we have explained in the model in Figure 2, their characteristics show flexibility in the resolution process, which leads to considering different paths depending on the context and characteristics of the problem posed. This flexibility explains the possibilities of using various approaches in STEM education (Purzer and Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019;Portillo-Blanco et al., 2024). In other words, there is no single approach to applying the STEM activity model in the classroom. ...
Integrated STEM education (iSTEM) has become an innovative educational strategy that combines Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics to address contemporary scientific and technical challenges. Yet, the variety of interpretations of the theoretical foundations of iSTEM education makes its understanding, analysis, and translation into classroom reality a complicated process. This article explores the foundations of iSTEM education by analyzing key systematic reviews that identify and describe the most widely agreed upon principles, with five: integration, real-world problems, inquiry, design, and cooperative work. Even so, the explanations in the literature reviewed do not clarify the relationship between them. Debate arises about their hierarchy and relative importance in the design of Teaching-Learning Sequences. The review of this study highlights that integration and the use of real-world problems are fundamental pillars, while other principles, such as inquiry and design, vary according to the disciplinary approach. The article also addresses the impact of problem choice on teaching strategies to understand the relationship between the principles of “real-world problem,” “design,” and “inquiry.” Thus, epistemological differences between Science, Mathematics, and Engineering determine how an iSTEM problem is defined and solved, with Science and Engineering leading the way in problem formulation due to their wide use in the literature. This allows for the analysis of Design-Based Learning (DBL) and Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) as the main teaching approaches and presents a range of problem types to be used in the classroom depending on the objective pursued. Finally, this study highlights the need to connect the theoretical foundations with their practical application in actual teaching-learning sequences, providing a framework for future research to enrich the understanding and application of iSTEM education.
... The fact that these elements are among the critical needs of this century and can be developed with STEM education makes STEM education more important each day. Many suggestions can be found in the literature about how STEM education, an interdisciplinary approach, should be implemented in the classroom [4,[10][11][12]. Regardless of the approach to be adopted, for STEM activities to be sustainable in the classroom, teachers need to have the knowledge and skills to strengthen their lessons with interdisciplinary connections [3]. ...
... This study is informed by the Framework for Quality K-12 Engineering Education (QEE) and the instructional perspective that considers engineering as a pedagogical approach in integrated STEM education (e.g., Purzer & Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019). The QEE Framework was designed to be used as a tool for assessing the quality of engineering integration and involves 12 key indicators to be incorporated in K-12 education for a qualified engineering integration. ...
... As one of the essential indicators, applying science and mathematics in the context of solving ED challenges directly relates to what the focus of this study of science teachers' integrated STEM implementations in the present study. Engineering as a pedagogical approach mainly involves the use of ED to improve student understanding of science and utilize scientific knowledge to develop engineering conceptions and skills (Roehrig et al., 2012;Lewis, 2006;Purzer & Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019). Pleasants et al. (2021) defined engineering design-based science teaching (EDST) as "the engagement of students in the constellation of engineering practices associated with technological design and development to advance students' science learning" (p. ...
... Following testing, the design process involves the redesign of the solutions to create opportunities for students to learn from failure. Finally, students share their optimal solutions Purzer and Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019). The whole design process aims to promote students' use of scientific conceptions to address a real-world design problem (Pleasants et al., 2021). ...
This research investigated how middle school science teachers integrated engineering into their planned science instruction and the extent to which they conceptually linked science to engineering following participation in a professional development program. Video recordings of six teachers’ classroom implementation of teacher-designed units were the main data sources (i.e., more than 3000 min). Additionally, the integrated STEM unit plans were used as a secondary source. A deductive analysis of the data showed that the extent and timing of engineering integration and the extent of conceptual connections between science and engineering varied in six teachers’ classrooms. All teachers started the instruction with an engineering design challenge. However, only two teachers integrated engineering throughout the unit. Five out of six participants identified opportunities for students to redesign their engineering solutions both in the unit plan and their unit implementation, whereas one teacher gave students a chance to redesign but it was not stated in the unit plan. Regarding science and engineering integration during the unit implementations, two teachers made topical connections, and only one teacher established deep conceptual connections. The findings of the study reported the difficulty of engineering integration both in earth and life science content domains and showed an urgent need for further teacher professional development programs that explicitly focus on how engineering and science are conceptually linked.
... This trend is driven in part by initiatives such as the A Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council 2012) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) in the United States, which present a new vision for science education that encompasses engineering practices. Several other ongoing challenges and research findings have unveiled numerous reasons for deeper integration of engineering design into K-12 or pre-college settings, including: providing an integrative STEM learning experience (English et al., 2020;Moore et al., 2014), supporting learning in other STEM domains, including science (Aranda et al., 2020;Purzer & Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019) and math (English et al., 2020;Chiu et al., 2013); raising interest and awareness of engineering at a time when enrollment in the field is not keeping pace with demand (Polmear et al., 2023;Brophy et al., 2008;Clark & Andrews, 2010); helping students develop interdisciplinary or transferable ways of thinking, skills, and practices including design thinking Li et al., 2019). ...
Worldwide, engineering design is seeing an increase in pre-college settings due to changing educational policies and standards. Additionally, these projects can help students develop critical skills for a broad range of problem settings, such as design thinking and reflection. In design and other contexts, reflection is a mental process where someone returns to previous experience and uses this revisiting to aid in new actions. While there is substantial research studying design practices at the collegiate or professional level, the design practices of younger students remain understudied. Moreover, past research on reflection has tended to focus on how to support reflection or what impact reflection has and not how students engage in reflection strategies. We had 105 middle school students in the Midwestern United States design a green-energy home using a computer-aided design (CAD) tool, Energy3D. Students were instructed to use Energy3D’s design journal to reflect on their design process throughout the project, enabling students to employ different reflection strategies. Energy3D unobtrusively captures students’ design actions, including journal interactions; these were used to identify students' reflection strategies. Three features of journal interaction were developed, i.e., frequency of interaction across sessions, intensity of interaction, and relative frequency of journal use over other actions. We used k-means cluster analysis on these features and discovered four groups representing different strategies. Regression was used to understand the relationship between reflection strategies and design outcomes. Finally, we draw out implications for supporting pre-college students' productive beginnings of engagement in reflection and future study directions.
... After analyzing the literature, we can classify this integration into three chief types: integration with technology education, integration with science education, and integrated STEM education (iSTEM). This is evident as engineering is inherently interdisciplinary [35]. As Cajas [36] mentioned, engineering occurs at the intersection of multiple disciplines (Fig. 8), and solutions to engineering problems involve various aspects of science, technology, society, and economics. ...
... This is related to the initial form of the EDP entering K-12 education. In the late 20th century, science research using design as a teaching method began to appear, and engineering design and scientific inquiry merged to form a new science teaching approach: design inquiry [35]. The core idea of this method is to consider design as a teaching method that promotes a deeper understanding of core ideas in science. ...
To comprehensively assess the impact of K-12 engineering education research (K-12 EER) and provide insights to stakeholders and policymakers, this study uses the scientometric analysis software CiteSpace to evaluate recent advances in K-12 EER. A search of 885 articles from the Web of Science Core Collection was conducted. This study analyzed publication trends, authors, countries, and research institutions to determine the trajectory of the K-12 EER. In addition, keyword co-occurrence and clustering maps were generated to identify major hotspots, and keyword burst detection was used to demonstrate development trends. The analysis reveals that global interest in the K-12 EER is growing, and the results are accumulating rapidly. However, cooperation between universities, institutions, experts, and scholars must be strengthened. Current significant topics in K-12 EER focus on the practical form of engineering education, its impact on learners, the centrality of engineering design, and teachers' professional development. Research frontiers primarily revolve around the nature of engineering. Future research efforts should promote the systematic integration of K-12 engineering education through the learning process, develop comprehensive measurement tools to assess its impact on learners, and expand research on teachers’ professional development in K-12 engineering education.
... Science and engineering are different disciplines. Scientific research tends to focus on explaining theoretical phenomena, while engineering emphasizes the design of solutions and products for complex interdisciplinary problems in our communities (Purzer & Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019). A related analysis of the data set we used in this study revealed little evidence of engineering content and practices in science teachers' lesson plans (Hasseler et al., 2022). ...
In the landscape of U.S. education, the widespread adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) offers a unique vantage point for researchers to better understand teacher-, school- and classroom-level factors that advance reform initiatives in science classrooms. Addressing a gap in current knowledge, our study probes how secondary science teachers implement one dimension of NGSS-the science practices (SPs).
Our data collection encompasses teacher interviews and meticulous
observations of science lessons, coded for NGSS science practices (SPs) and inquiry-based teaching. Embracing a methodologically rich
approach, our study employs both qualitative and quantitative data
collection and analysis. Quantitatively, we analyzed 801 weeks of lessons taught by 56 secondary science teachers and found patterns in SP use.
Selected high-quality science lessons were then spotlighted, providing examples of the quantitative findings, showcasing teachers use of SPs and inquiry-based teaching strategies. Through our analysis, we found that physical science subjects and participants from the Master of Arts in Science Teaching program demonstrated a higher average use of SPs compared to their life science and undergraduate program counterparts. When analyzing the use of specific SPs, we found that analyzing and interpreting data (SP4) and mathematical and computational thinking (SP5) emerged as noteworthy. This study’s findings carry implications for science teacher education and professional development programs, urging efforts to augment both the quantity of rigor of SP use in the secondary science classroom. Our research contributes insights that can inform strategies for the enhancement of science education alignment with the objectives set forth by NGSS.
... Research has shown that integration of engineering into learning science can provide an authentic context for understanding and application of science [10]. However, students do not necessarily rigorously apply science concepts while solving an ED problem [11,12]. ...
... Meaningful differences between science and engineering are not in terms of their practices (e.g., asking questions, observing, experimenting) but more in terms of their purpose and motives [10]. For the data analysis of this study, we will adhere to the framework provided by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) [6]. ...
... Engineering design starts with problem scoping and focuses on design constraints and criteria for a successful solution Senay and Quintana-Cifuentes, (2019)). During the design process, learners are expected to learn and apply the relevant scientific concepts to their design solutions . ...
... After data are interpreted, students should engage in redesign, an opportunity to learning from failure (Cunningham and Carlsen 2014;Moore et al. 2014). Following these iterative redesign cycles, each group shares the optimal solutions Senay and Quintana-Cifuentes 2019). ...
Background and Purpose: As a response to the need for effective engineering integration in K-12 science classrooms, teachers should be supported with rich professional development (PD) with diverse components (e.g. curriculum material support). Grounded in the framework for quality K-12 engineering education, this study explores how elementary science teachers integrated engineering into science lessons after participating in PD and the nature of engineering integration with additional curriculum material support (CMS). Design/Method: In this single-case study with multiple embedded units of analysis, three teachers' 79 classroom video recordings were analyzed using the Classroom Observation Protocol for Engineering Design with the engineering design process and engineering habits of mind components. Findings: Analysis showed that teachers spent time on each design component in both PD Year and CMS Year, with an increase for at least half of the components in the CMS Year. Across all the observations in both years, the most common engineering design process component was researching possible solutions to the engineering challenge. Compared to the PD Year, teachers' engineering habits of mind integration improved greatly in the CMS Year. Regarding engineering design and science concepts integration , observations became more balanced, moving away from the independent ends of the continuum in the CMS Year. Conclusions: Long-term PD was effective in supporting teachers' integration of engineering design components. Providing CMS had the greatest impact on the integration of engineering habits of mind components. Along with PD, curriculum support with explicit indication of how and when to incorporate engineering with habits of mind components was beneficial for teachers.
... Transdisciplinary teaching requires the integration of mathematics and statistics in STEM classes through meaningful and applied contexts. STEM educators will need professional development to enable them to reflect on and incorporate transdisciplinary approaches such as engineering design, entrepreneurship, computational reasoning, science model-based reasoning, or quantitative reasoning into their teaching (Bartholomew & Strimel, 2018;Purzer & Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019). ...
The United States National Science and Technology Council has made a call for improving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education at the convergence of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The National Science Foundation (NSF) views convergence as the merging of ideas, approaches, and technologies from widely diverse fields of knowledge to stimulate innovation and discovery. Teaching convergency requires moving to the transdisciplinary level of integration where there is deep integration of skills, disciplines, and knowledge to solve a challenging real-world problem. Here we present a summary on convergence and transdisciplinary teaching. We then provide examples of convergence and transdisciplinary teaching in plant biology, and conclude by discussing limitations to contemporary conceptions of convergency and transdisciplinary STEM.
... In elementary classrooms, engineering most often takes the form of engaging students in design challenges that follow a "Design-Build-Test" (DBT) model of engineering pedagogy (Purzer & Quintana-Cifuentes, 2019). In DBT tasks, students develop a prototype technology that addresses a design problem, then refine their prototypes through cycles of testing, reflection, and re-design. ...
Engineering design is being increasingly included in elementary education, typically to provide students with opportunities to apply science and mathematics concepts while developing their engineering practices. An important question is how to prepare teachers who can help students develop more informed engineering practices during classroom design tasks. In this multiple case study, we examine the engineering instruction of upper elementary (grades 3–5) teachers in the context of a professional development project. We analyze how those teachers provided scaffolding for a set of engineering design practices across 12 design lessons. We found that teachers provided substantial scaffolding for practices related to organizing the design process and attending to constraints when making design choices. However, with a couple notable exceptions, teachers provided minimal scaffolding for problem framing practices such as defining requirements and developing testing procedures. The professional development emphasized scaffolding strategies for problem framing practices, and so we explore reasons why they were so rarely implemented. We consider strengths and limitations of the pedagogical model that teachers employed, as well as a need to clarify practice-related outcomes for engineering instruction. We discuss implications and recommendations for elementary engineering instruction and teacher education.
