Corey Mathis’s research while affiliated with California State University, Bakersfield and other places

Engineering design‐based STEM integration is one potential model to help students integrate content and practices from all of the STEM disciplines. In this study, we explored the intersection of two aspects of pre‐college STEM education: the integration of the STEM disciplines, and the NGSS practice of engaging in argument from evidence within engineering. Specifically, our research question was: While generating and justifying solutions to engineering design problems in engineering design‐based STEM integration units, what STEM content do elementary and middle school students discuss? We used naturalistic inquiry to analyze student team audio recordings from seven curricular units in order to identify the variety of STEM content present as students justified their design ideas and decisions (i.e., used evidence‐based reasoning). Within the four disciplines, fifteen STEM content categories emerged. Particularly interesting were the science and mathematics categories. All seven student teams used unit‐based science, and five used unit‐based mathematics, to support their design ideas. Five teams also applied science and/or mathematics content that was outside the scope of the units' learning objectives. Our results demonstrate that students integrated content from all four STEM disciplines when justifying engineering design ideas and solutions, thus supporting engineering design‐based STEM integration as a curricular model.

Although engineering design is dependent upon the use of science and mathematics, the actual prototype, model, or solution that pre-college students generate can be accomplished without the students explicitly using scientific or mathematical concepts. It is therefore important to explore how students apply science and mathematics concepts when engaged in a curriculum that was purposefully developed to foster student understanding of standards-based content. The purpose of this research is to apply the case study method to explore the following research question: How do middle school students use scientific and mathematical concepts that were explored during the problem scoping lessons of an engineering design-based STEM integration unit to generate ideas and make design decisions? Researchers collected data from one 7th-grade team during an integrated STEM unit and applied qualitative content analysis methods to examine the data. The findings show that students meaningfully used science and mathematics concepts taught within the unit to defend their engineering design ideas/decisions. It also revealed incomplete understanding of certain concepts. Engineering design can provide opportunities for teachers to assess how well students have learned scientific and mathematical concepts, provided that the curricula are carefully designed to prompt students' use of content to make design decisions. © 2018 International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology. All rights reserved.

One of the fundamental practices identified in Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is argumentation, which has been researched in P-12 science education for the previous two decades but has yet to be studied within the context of P-12 engineering education. This research explores how elementary and middle school science teachers incorporated argumentation into engineering design-based STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) integration curricular units they developed during a professional development program. To gain a better understanding of how teachers included argumentation in their curricula, a multiple case study approach was conducted using four STEM integration units. While evidence of argumentation was found in each curriculum, the degree to which it appeared in each case varied. The strongest potential for argumentation occurred when students were required to explain and justify their final engineering design solutions to the client; certain guiding questions and discussions also promoted argumentation, depending on their structure. Additionally, argumentation was found to support engineering concepts such as the process of design, engineering thinking, communication in engineering contexts, and the application of science, mathematics, and engineering content. These findings support the idea that argumentation can be integrated into P-12 engineering education contexts in order to support students’ STEM learning.

Nations throughout the world have recognized the importance of having a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) competent workforce in today's highly competitive and technical economy. As such, the past fifteen years have seen a sharp rise in introducing pre-college (P-12) students to engineering and engaging them in learning engineering principles. Policy decisions to include engineering in national curriculum and standards have not been informed by as rich a body of research as subjects such as mathematics and science; however, research on P-12 engineering education is on the rise. This paper presents a systematic review of the engineering education research in P-12 published in journals from 2000-2015.Asystematic review follows a set of replicable, detailed procedures that describe how the articles were selected, reviewed, and analysed. The results of this review included 218 peer-reviewed journal articles. The paper details the kinds of research and research questions these papers focused on, and synthesizes and discusses findings of across different topics, and proposes research topics ripe for further work.

This study focuses on student learning of engineering design practices and the development of engineering thinking skills during participation in design-based curricular activities and will seek to answer the question: What evidence is present in students' engineering design project work of engineering learning? Student teams working in a STEM integration curricular module implemented in a fifth grade science classroom were analyzed. This study employs case study methods as a means to deeply analyze each team's work through content analysis of student classroom artifacts and video analysis. We use the Framework for Quality K-12 Engineering Education, with a particular focus on process of design, STEM content, engineering thinking, and communication, as a lens for analyzing the engineering thinking involved in student learning. This research aims to develop an initial understanding of how to identify these engineering learning outcomes in classrooms, with the overall goal of developing engineering assessment tools for classroom teachers. Evidence of student learning outcomes for these key engineering components was found throughout student work and student interactions, though varying levels of learning were shown by each group. This study demonstrates that it is possible to identify student learning of engineering processes within a design-based curriculum.