High School Teachers' Differing Perceptions of the Engineering Design Process (Poster 25)

• In Event: AERA Virtual Poster Session 6
  In Poster Session: Computational Thinking and the Learner and Educator Experience

Abstract

Engineering design theory and pedagogy is becoming increasingly mainstream in K-12 settings, generally embodied as “The Engineering Design Process (EDP).” However, there are many different instantiations of “the” EDP across different educational settings which use different vocabulary, steps, and structures from the design theory literature. Much as the “scientific method” was codified by K-12 educators and standard-setters, the EDP is undergoing a similar coming-of-age in that it is being redefined and codified in K-12 settings. In this paper, we qualitatively examined the internalized EDPs used by four high school engineering teachers comparing them with the EDP used by engineering education researchers to understand potential discrepancies and misconceptions about engineering design.

Authors

• Roxanne Moore, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Hoda Ehsan, The Hill School

• Meltem Alemdar, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Euisun Kim, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Michael Helms, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Jeffrey Rosen, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Marc Weissburg, Georgia Institute of Technology