Student Success During Educator-Scaffolded Engineering Design Experiences

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Eighteen
  In Roundtable Session: STEM Spirals, Scaffolds, and Student Understanding (Table 8)

Abstract

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to apply the pedagogical strategy of scaffolded instruction to improve students’ performance on an engineering design challenge over and above the effects of their mathematics and science academic level. This research investigated if secondary students’ mathematics and science academic levels influenced their success during an engineering design experience based on educators’ implementation of a scaffolded instructional process called SCOPE (Hughes & Denson, 2021). Results indicate that both below and above grade level students can benefit from scaffolding during complex engineering design challenges. These findings underscore the need for STEM educators to provide more challenging engineering design learning experiences for students while supporting them with robust scaffolds like SCOPE.

Authors

• Andrew J. Hughes, California State University - San Bernardino
  Presenting Author

• Tyler S. Love, University of Maryland - Eastern Shore
  Presenting Author