Novel Engineering: Integrating Engineering and Literacy

• In Event: 47.073 - Weaving Stories Into STEM Learning

Abstract

INTRODUCTION
Novel Engineering is an integrated approach to teaching engineering and literacy in elementary and middle school classrooms. Through this approach, students derive engineering problems from classroom texts and then move through the engineering design process as they build solutions that are influenced by the characters, settings, and plots about which they are reading. This poster will introduce the Novel Engineering approach, and share the research related to this integrated approach that has demonstrated the significant capabilities this type of approach has for elucidating students and teacher abilities.

PERSPECTIVE
Novel Engineering leverages two guiding principles in its design. The first principle is that teachers are professionals who should be empowered to make responsive decisions about learning and instruction in their classroom. This principle is grounded in work on responsive teaching in science that asserts that pedagogical moves, instructional choices, and learning goals should be derived by the teacher from students’ action and discourse (Hammer, Goldberg, & Fargason, 2012; Levin, Hammer, Elby, & Coffey, 2013; Roberston, Scherr, & Hammer, 2015). The second principle is that kids have nascent engineering abilities that can be capitalized on by providing them with meaningful contexts in which they can develop and expand their practices. This principle comes from work showing how student are able to engage in engineering design practices with minimal direct instruction in particular rich contexts (Author et al, 2012; Watkins, Spencer, & Hammer, 2014).

RESEARCH ON NOVEL ENGINEERING
Research on Novel Engineering has taken an in-depth qualitative approach, focusing on analyzing discourse and interaction in classrooms. The dynamics of how students engage with an integrated engineering and literacy approach as well as how teachers are able to navigate design problems as learners and educators have been targets of the research. Watkins, Spencer, & Hammer (2014) looked at how students engage in problem scoping within Novel Engineering activities, highlighting their abilities to balance criteria and to take different perspectives. Similarly, Author et al (2012) examined the emergent nascent planning abilities of students when designing physical solutions for characters in a Novel Engineering unit. They found that students have rich resources for identifying materials they needed, creating representations of their ideas and using those representations as a guide for their prototyping when the context of the project made planning necessary. McCormick and Hammer (McCormick & Hammer, accepted, Under Review) explored the potential mechanisms for why Novel Engineering research shows students taking up engineering practices in different ways. In particular, they looked at the idea of epistemological framing, how students interpret the purpose of an activity within a classroom in relation to engineering activities (McCormick & Hammer, accepted). They illustrate how students’ framings shifts in response to the students’ sense of the purposes of the activity as well as how materials and prototypes influence students framing of the activity (McCormick & Hammer, Under Review)

Authors

• Merredith Portsmore, Tufts University

• Elissa Milto, Tufts University

• Jessica Watkins, Vanderbilt University