The Language of Reflective Decision Making in Urban Elementary Engineering Design: A Case Study

• In Event: Reconceptualizing the Learning Spaces Created by Elementary Classroom Engineering

Abstract

Engineers work in teams on open-ended problems that require negotiation, collaboration,
and ongoing discovery rather than rigid and narrow responses that demonstrate predetermined answers. Participation in these activities through engineering curriculum in the early grades affords elementary students opportunities to develop and practice agency and authority as learners who are responsible to their own learning community as well as able to communicate with others outside of that setting (Brophy et al., 2008; Hegedus et al., 2014). Engaging in engineering design as a social process simultaneously offers a rich context for students to grow as language and literacy practitioners as they wrestle with complex ideas to develop, communicate, and revise their designs (Wilson et al., 2014). K-12 engineering curriculum offers classroom “micro-cultures” (Cobb, 2001) where students develop and draw on a rich toolbox of language and literacy practices. That is, engineering practices are “discourse enabling” as well as “discourse dependent” (Moje et al. 2001).

Central to the engineering process is the cycle of design and redesign (Engineering is
Elementary, 2011) that involves negotiated decisions by members of a design team. This paper provides a case study developed from a larger project investigating the demands, and challenges of elementary engineering curriculum in urban elementary classrooms. The larger project identified six elements of reflective decision making suggested by the literature and present across thirteen-episodes where student teams from multiple sites engaged in face-to-face design planning and redesign challenges. These elements include: #1: Articulate Multiple Solutions, #2 Evaluate Pros and Cons, #3 Intentionally Select a Solution, #4 Retell Performance of a Solution, #5 Analyze Solution According to Specific Evidence, and #6 Purposefully Choose Improvements (Authors, 2015). Evidence from the larger study demonstrated variation among the design teams that both supported and limited their progress. Variation was observed in two general areas necessary to design: teamwork and documentation of their process. This case study team stood out among others for their teamwork in keeping the design process moving forward: despite periodic disagreement, through close attention to the design constraints and with flexibility leading to three cycles of redesign, far more than classroom peers. Ethnographic and discourse analytic methods focus on the linguistic and semiotic tools used to make meaning as the team, and periodically a teacher, interacted (Bloome et al. 2005; Pappas et al., 2003; Jewett & Kress, 2003). Data includes transcribed video and documents created by the team including charts and multimodal ipad notebook pages. The discourse contained multiple mood choices and intertextual references utilized by various team members to construct a design narrative and renegotiate their roles. The analysis also closely explores the multiple modalities including spoken, gestural, media and material used for communication. The goal is to provide a close study of the engineering/language relationship as design (New London Group, 1998). That is, it further illuminates what students are “doing” with language while designing with objects and materials (Author, 2014).

Authors

• Patricia C. Paugh, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Kristen Wendell, Tufts University

• Christopher George Wright, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville