Christine M Cunningham

• Ph.D.
• Professor at Pennsylvania State University

In this paper, we address the societally important issue of developing a more equitable approach to preK-12 engineering education. Our primary emphasis is on K-8 grades—a time when first impressions of engineering may be developed. Calls for increased participation by all students, including those who have been historically marginalized, motivate t...

Recent science education reform documents in the United States have called for teachers to teach content related to engineering and science and to do so by engaging students in disciplinary practices. One important practice of engineering is improving from failure. Thus, students should experience productive failure as part of engineering design ac...

In this position paper, we draw from previous research and theoretical developments in the field to propose a set of affordances of engineering with English learners (ELs). Students learning both the language of instruction (e.g., English) and academic subject matter (e.g., engineering, mathematics, science) face the challenge of making sense of li...

The Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards propose that students learn core ideas and practices related to engineering as well as science. To do so, students will need high‐quality curricular materials designed to meet these goals. We report an efficacy study of an elementary engineering curriculum, Engineeri...

English learners are a rapidly growing population in elementary schools—currently over 16% of children entering kindergarten are English learners. All students develop proficiency with knowledge and practices through meaningful engagement and authentic discourse. Our previous work with teachers of English learners surfaced that the opportunity to r...

Students in grades 3-5 were asked to rate their interest in and attitudes towards engineering after participating in a school-year engineering curriculum unit, as compared to their remembered interest and attitudes of the summer before. The Engineering Interests and Attitudes (EIA) survey has six subscales, and its development and characteristics a...

Engineering design provides unique ways to include epistemic tools to support collaborative sense‐making, reasoning with evidence, and assessing knowledge. Engineering design processes often require students to apply science concepts to solve problems. We draw from five engineering curricular units that engaged students in specific epistemic practi...

In this chapter, we examine what age-appropriate engineering should entail for children at the preschool (ages 3–4), kindergarten (ages 5–6), and primary (ages 7–8) grade levels. We propose a set of design parameters that develop foundational engineering concepts and practices in children as they participate in engineering activity and design. At t...

Guided by the theoretical framework of curriculum as a platform for talent development, this quasi-experimental field study investigated an intervention focused on engineering curriculum and curriculum based on a biography of a scientist through a comparative design implemented in low-income schools. Student outcome measures included science conten...

As part of a large-scale efficacy study of an elementary engineering curriculum, we collected post-surveys of students’ interests in and attitudes towards engineering. Over two years, we collected almost 14,000 surveys from students in grades 3, 4, and 5 who participated in one of two engineering curricula, the treatment and comparison curriculum....

This article examines the emergence of identity work in engineering among elementary school students.Engineering has only recently been added to state and national standards in the United States. The pur-pose of the study was to examine ways that engaging in engineering practices transforms students’views of engineering and themselves. Video of two...

Engineering design challenges offer important opportunities for students to learn science and engineering knowledge and practices. This study examines how students’ engineering notebooks across four units of the curriculum Engineering is Elementary (EiE) support student work during design challenges. Through educational ethnography and discourse an...

Engineering offers new educational opportunities for students, yet also poses challenges about how to conceptualize the disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices of the disciplinary fields of engineering. In this paper, we draw from empirical studies of engineering in professional and school settings to p...

The introduction of engineering in K-12 education in the United States offers new potential and challenges for schools interested in teaching engineering in the elementary grades. This study examines how a teacher frames engineering practices for her students through the teaching of an Engineering is Elementary (EiE) instructional unit. Discourse...

This chapter discusses the important features of age-appropriate engineering education for school-age children. It lays out core concepts and practices for engaging children, articulating eight design parameters that include narrative context; goals, constraints, and requirements; engineering design processes and epistemic practices; exploring mate...

In the last two decades educators have begun advocate for the inclusion of engineering at the pre-university level. Before this time, efforts were focused on students at the secondary level – a goal was to recruit and prepare students for engineering majors in college. More recently, attention has turned to involving younger children – elementary c...

HLM modeling of pre/post-assessment results from a large-scale efficacy study of elementary engineering (Curriculum Evaluation)As engineering enters K-12 classrooms, it is important that curricula and activities engage students and foster student learning of engineering concepts. This paper reports on an efficacy study that is examining the effects...

The i2 Camp funding provided through this grant allowed for successful development and evaluation of 10 Engineering Everywhere (EE) units, which are condensed versions of each week-long i2 courses. These EE units were created for use with 6th-8th graders in out-of-school time (OST) programs, such as afterschool and camp. Development included two ro...

Engineering has not historically been considered an “elementary” topic. However, with the recognition that engineering’s applied orientation may be particularly motivating to young children, that engineering can contribute to the meaningful integration of science and mathematics, and that children begin to have preferences about future careers befo...

As we introduce engineering into K-12 education, we must work vigilantly from its inception to ensure that it is inviting and engaging for all students, particularly those who are underserved, underperforming, or underrepresented in STEM fields, including girls, minorities, students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, students with individualized e...

With the new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) [1], elementary teachers are called for the first time to teach engineering to their students. For the teachers themselves, as well as those working to provide curriculum and professional development to elementary school teachers in engineering, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. Adopt...

Engineering is featured prominently in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and related reform documents, but how its nature and methods are described is problematic. This paper is a systematic review and critique of that representation, and proposes that the disciplinary core ideas of engineering (as described in the NGSS) can be disregard...

An instrument designed to measure elementary school students' knowledge of the work of engineers, as well as naïve conceptions about engineering, is analyzed. Preliminary data are presented showing the reliability and validity of scales constructed from survey items. Results from a sample of 1126 students prior to participation in engineering lesso...

As we introduce engineering into K-12 education, we must work vigilantly from its inception to ensure that it is inviting and engaging for all students, particularly those who are underserved, underperforming, or underrepre-sented in STEM fields, including girls, minorities, students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, students with individualized...

Results are presented from formative and summative evaluation of two Engineering is Elementary (EiE) units in development: Designing Solar Ovens and Designing Parachutes. These two units were field tested during the 2008-2009 school year, the sixth year of the EiE project, with results of field testing used to revise the units for publication. Teac...

Results are presented from formative and summative evaluation of nine Engineering is Elementary (EiE) units that were field tested between autumn 2006 and spring 2009, the fourth through sixth years of the EiE project. Teachers submitted feedback forms as well as pre-and post-assessments completed by students in field test and control classrooms. T...

Executive Summary Engineering is Elementary (EiE) began curriculum development efforts in 2003. EiE has created 20 supplemental curriculum modules to teach elementary school children engineering in a hands-on manner, in the context of science (as taught by the most common hands-on science curricula). This report details evaluation findings (both fo...

Engineering is Elementary's newest large-scale assessments are much improved over early attempts, thanks to innovation and improvement in the development process. Because engineering is so sensitive to specifics of a situation, and because multiple solutions are nearly always possible, targeting engineering "knowledge" and "know-how" is often best...

Since 2004, Engineering is Elementary has conducted formative and summative assessment as we develop units for a supplementary curriculum comprised of twenty units in total, each designed to introduce children to a field of engineering and technology in conjunction with existing, related science instruction. This paper will summarize evaluation res...

Findings are presented from a research program conducted by the Engineering is Elementary curriculum development project. Students participating in testing of the EiE curriculum materials were given pre-assessments and post-assessments that included questions about general engineering and technology concepts, engineering questions specific to parti...

This paper introduces a model that has been successful for introducing engineering concepts and activities into middle and high school courses. Science, mathematics, and technology teachers participating in the Pre-College Engineering for Teachers (PCET) professional development project attended a two-week summer institute focused on engineering co...

The Women’s Experience in College Engineering (WECE) project is the first cross-institutional, longitudinal examination of the impact of Women in Engineering programs on undergraduate women’s persistence in engineering. This paper provides an overview of the findings from the WECE study related to women’s participation in support activities. These...

Overview As our society becomes increasingly dependent on engineering and technology, it is more important than ever that everyone have a basic understanding of what engineers do, and the uses and implications of the technologies they create. Yet few citizens are technologically literate, in large part because technology and engineering are not tau...

The assessment of elementary school students' conceptions of engineering and technology through a survey was discussed. An instrument to measure students' conceptions of technology was created and the technology table also contained 16 images and descriptions and asked students to circle those items that were technology. The final items included sh...

Although people spend over 95% of their time interacting with the human-made world, few can articulate how our designed world came to be (engineering) and how the products that we have developed to meet our needs (technology) function. This is largely due to the fact that the disciplines of engineering and technology are not studied in the majority...

An emerging change across the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics curriculum is the implementation of online, or virtual laboratories as supplements or replacements to both homework assignments and laboratory exercises. To test the effectiveness of such labs, a web-based virtual laboratory on the topic of torsion of engineered and bio...

When one mentions the word engineering, most people think immediately of high-tech items such as computers, or large-scale projects such as bridges, buildings, and roads. While these products represent the products of engineering, there are clear challenges to having students work directly on any of these projects in the context of a science classr...

MentorNet www.MentorNet.net;, the E-Mentoring Network for Diversity in Engineering and Science, addresses the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics "STEM". MentorNet offers a multiinstitutional, structured, electronic mentoring "e-mentoring" program that pairs undergraduate and graduate students, primaril...

Over the past 20 years, colleges and universities across the country have developed Women in Engineering (WIE) and Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) programs as resources to promote the recruitment and retention of women in college engineering. As part of the Women's Experiences in College Engineering project, a series of interviews were cond...

The public has an incomplete understanding of engineers and engineering as a profession. In discussions about the public's understanding of engineers, many have referenced the "conventional" stereotype of engineers as train operators. Though this stereotype may exist among students as well as the public, few investigations to date have focused on s...

The use virtual labs in learning the concepts of engineering mechanics is discussed. The virtual labs are recorded experiments where students can view actual experiments and work with real data. The lab is web-based and consists of narrated chalk talk on basis theory, and data reduction procedures, extensive set of data, and a lab manual suggested...

The Women's Experiences in College Engineering (WECE) project is the first cross-institutional, longitudinal examination of undergraduate women's experiences and persistence in engineering majors. The study was funded by both the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and conducted by Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG), a re...

MentorNet (www.MentorNet.net), the E-Mentoring Network for Women in Engineering and Science, leverages technology and draws on the benefits of mentoring to address the underrepresentation of women in engineering, science, math, and technology fields. A multi-institutional, large-scale, structured electronic mentoring (e-mentoring) program, MentorNe...

The current situation of women students in engineering, identifying barriers and obstacles to their persistence in engineering majors was reviewed. The efforts of MentorNet to support women engineering, science, math, and technolgoy students during the crucial first year of undergraduated education were also discussed. It was suggested that enginee...

In this article, we report on electronic discussion lists (e-lists) sponsored by MentorNet, the National Electronic Industrial Mentoring Network for Women in Engineering and Science. Using the Internet, the MentorNet program connects students in engineering and science with mentors working in industry. These e-lists are a feature of MentorNet's lar...

Electronic communications are providing unprecedented opportunities for the development of communities among people at diverse locations and with similar interests. This paper examines electronic communities sponsored by MentorNet (the National Electronic Industrial Mentoring Network for Women in Engineering and Science), which sponsors electronic...

Science education reform initiatives advocate incorporating more accurate portrayals of science in the high school classroom that attend to science in its larger social context. However, conveying such understandings will require teachers to possess new knowledge about how science is practised. This paper reports research that investigated the effe...

In this article, we argue that insights from scholarship in the sociology of science can provide a powerful basis for making science education more authentic and inclusive. Drawing on recent work in the sociology of science, we describe how adopting sociological ideas as integral components of science curricula and instruction can provide opportuni...

In 1999, the National Science Foundation Division of Graduate Education began a new project called the GK-12 program. These grants are awarded to universities to have graduate students and faculty in STEM fields work with teachers, schools, and students to improve STEM education. These grants are also awarded with the mission of educating the futur...

Abstract Findings are presented from a research program,conducted by the Engineering is Elementary curriculum development,project. Students participating in testing of the EiE curriculum materials were given pre-assessments and post-assessmentsthat included questions about general engineering and technology concepts, engineering questions specific...

Introduction Although engaging K-12 students in original inquiry or research is a cornerstone of current science education reform, efforts to meet this goal face a number of challenges. These include the need to balance content vs. open-ended inquiry while dealing with over-packed curricula and the pressure to prepare students for high stakes exams...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, August, 1995. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 313-328).