Engaging in Epistemic Practices Through Engineering Design

• In Event: 63.025 - Supporting Modeling Epistemologies in the Science Classroom

Abstract

Objectives. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) place prominence on three-dimensional learning—the integration of disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and scientific and engineering practices. The Engineering Design Process, when situated in ongoing epistemic practices of engineering, provides unique opportunities for students to learn about modeling and prototype development. The objective of this interactive poster is to examine the ways that engineering design can be used to support student learning of modeling in engineering and science.

Theoretical Framing. Engineering provides unique opportunities to engage with disciplinary practices of modeling. Engineering is an interdisciplinary endeavor that draws from mathematics and science to produce models and solutions to problems (Author2 & Author1, 2017). In contrast to the explanatory and predictive of models in science, engineering employs models to emphasize analytic and evaluative functions. Nevertheless, engineering models use scientific concepts to propose solutions given criteria and constraints imposed by the task. In this manner, engineering challenges provide students with opportunities to engage in conceptual, epistemic, and social practices across multiple disciplines (Author1, 2016; Author3, 2008).

Methods/Data. Our discourse analysis research examines ways that students use talk, texts, technologies, and diagrams to construct models that examine tradeoffs when making decisions about environmental problems. For example, in a unit on environmental engineering, students conducted controlled experiments to test the efficacy of materials for containing or removing oil from water. Groups drew on this knowledge as they designed and tested a model process to clean an oil spill. Through iterative design, groups refined their models in light of constraints including materials costs and effectiveness. Our research question is: How does building/refining models and solutions develop opportunities (a) to learn epistemic practices of science and engineering and (b) to evaluate decisions regarding ethical impacts?

To address these questions, we collected video data with three cameras for an extended engineering unit (approximately 12 hours) in an elementary classroom. We also collected and analyzed student notebooks used for the unit in conjunction with the video data. Drawing from sociolinguistics and educational ethnography, we created transcripts of the talk and action and analyzed strategic portions of the student notebooks that corresponded to the development and use of models, as a central epistemic practice of engineering. By examining the student discourse around their emergent and evolving models, we were able to identify education practices that supporting learning to use models.

Results and Scholarly Significance. Results of discourse and textual analysis show that particular curricular and classroom cultural norms supported student engagement in epistemic practices of science and engineering. The curriculum provided a problem space that imposed physical and cultural constraints, but allowed multiple solutions. The social nature of the engineering design encouraged students to learn from each other within and across groups. In this way, students’ development of models, prototypes, and solutions were held accountable to the criteria and constraints of the social and engineering situation.

Authors

• Gregory J. Kelly, The Pennsylvania State University

• Christine M. Cunningham, The Pennsylvania State University

• Richard A. Duschl, The Pennsylvania State University