Inservice Teachers’ Approaches to Open-Ended Engineering Design Problems and the
Engineering Design Process
Funded by The
National Science Foundation
Project Overview:
Click here for an overview of the project.
Goals:
The goal of this project was to investigate the design processes used by teachers in a professional development workshop. My research questions are:
- What
approaches do
- In what ways will their personal design processes change with varied exposure to the model of the engineering design process provided by the Massachusetts Frameworks?
- What kinds of concerns do these teachers have about engaging their students in open-ended engineering design projects and how can these concerns be minimized?
Outcomes:
Teachers emerged as either ‘builders’ or ‘programmers’, favoring one part of the design process over another. However, experience and discussion about the nature of design led to self-reported increases in comfort with building, programming, designing and teaching design.
A teacher’s program outline
Research design:
Study participants attended a professional development workshop in February 2004. During the workshop, teachers were given hands-on design challenges. Each workshop session was videotaped. The teachers also answered surveys after each session. I was interested in the design process of each teacher, and how this process evolved over the course of the workshop. Additionally, I was interested in exploring teachers’ concerns about implanting engineering design in their classrooms.
Results:
Discussion of the engineering design process helped teachers from feeling ‘lost’ during the creation of their projects. While teachers were initially concerned about knowing the right answer to all of their students’ questions, these concerns were alleviated after the workshop. One teacher said the engineering design process helped “wrap my mind around it all,” a thought that was echoed by several others. The results of this study are discussed further in “Inservice Teachers and the Engineering Design Process”, submitted to the American Society of Engineering Education’s 2005 Conference.
A robotic cat created during the workshop. Click here for the
project gallery.
Related Literature:
A robotic cat from the workshop.
Click here to go to the project gallery.
Though there has been much research done about students
engaging in open-ended engineering design problems (for example (McRobbie,
Norton, & Ginns, 2003; Roth, 1995, 1997; Welch,
1999))
and some research about preservice teachers (McRobbie,
Ginns, & Stein ., 2000; McRobbie,
Stein, & Ginns, 2001), there seems to be no
research about inservice teachers in this area.
Campbell McRobbie, Sarah Stein, and Ian Ginns’ (2000, 2001) research with preservice
teachers provides the most useful insights for the proposed research. Preservice teachers defined their tasks and stuck with
their general plan throughout the activity (McRobbie
et al., 2001).
This is in contrast to younger students that other research has shown do not
adhere to a single plan (Roden,
1999; Welch, 1999).
Additionally, the preservice teachers used systematic
testing procedures to optimize their solutions (McRobbie
et al., 2001),
while younger students have a harder time making the transition away from trial
and error (Welch, 1999). These differences in tacit
strategies may prove to be important for teachers to understand when engaging
their students in design challenges. Additionally, there may be differences
between preservice and inservice
teachers that are not yet know because of the lack of research dealing with inservice teachers. This research will attempt to address
this gap.
To review my bibliography, click here.
Links:
www.ceeo.tufts.edu
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http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/robolabatceeo/ - The CEEO’s Robolab page for curriculum, activities, tips, tricks and more.
http://www.tuftl.tufts.edu/ - The Tufts University Future Technologies Lab main page.
www.tufts.edu/~ecejka01/tuftl.htm
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www.tufts.edu/~ecejka01
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