K-12 Engineering Education Standards: - International Technology ...

CONTENT STANDARDS—A description of the knowledge
and skills students are expected to learn by the end of
their schooling. Content standards describe learning
outcomes, but they are not the instructional materials;
i.e., lessons, classes, courses of study, or school
programs.
CURRICULUM—The way content is delivered. Curriculum
includes the structure, organization, balance, and
presentation of content in the classroom.
PERFORMANCE STANDARDS—A description of the form
and function of achievement that serves as evidence
students have learned. Performance standards are
usually described in relation to content standards.
Performance standards sometimes identify levels
of achievement for content standards, e.g., basic,
proficient, advanced.
TEACHING STANDARDS—Descriptions of the educational
experiences provided by teachers, textbooks,
technology. Teaching standards should indicate the
quality of instruction for students and can emphasize
unique features such as design experiences in
engineering and use of integrated instructional
sequences.
Table 1. Some Terms Used in Standards-Based Reform
The Idea of Education Standards Is Not New
More than a century ago, The Committee of Ten made
recommendations concerning college admissions
requirements. The recommendations included the use
of laboratories in science teaching. The Committee of
Ten report influenced numerous programs and practices
in the nation’s schools (Sizer, 1964; DeBoer, 1991).
One particular example makes a point about national
standards. The Committee of Ten report served as the
impetus for the Harvard Descriptive List, a description
of experiments in physics to be used for admission to the
college. Students applying to Harvard would be required
to complete 40 different experiments as well as a written
test about the experiments and principles of physics. The
point here is that the Harvard Descriptive List fulfilled
the definition of education standards, by definition a
combination of content and teaching standards.
Since the late 1800s, numerous policies, generally in the
form of committee reports, have described what is now
referred to as education standards. The standards referred
to science—technology and engineering were almost
never mentioned. In recent decades, however, technology
was often (and incorrectly) referred to as applied science.
In the late 1980s, in the latter years of the “Sputnik era,”
a new stage of education emerged. That new period
can be characterized as the “standards era.” The likely
origin of this era is the 1983 report of the National
Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at
Risk. Two recommendations from the report set the stage
for standards: 1) strengthening the content of the core
curriculum and 2) raising expectations using measurable
standards. The report described course requirements in
five core subjects for high school graduation—English,
mathematics, science, social studies, and computer
science. Science and mathematics were included as core
subjects. To state the obvious, neither technology nor
engineering were among the core subjects.
In 1989, then President George Bush and Governors
(including Bill Clinton) met in Charlottesville for an
Education Summit, the outcomes of which included
National Education Goals. Creation of National
Education Goals directly led to initiatives for voluntary
national standards in each of the core subjects. In this
same year, 1989, the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics published Curriculum and Evaluation
Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 1989), and
the American Association for the Advancement of
Science published Science for All Americans (AAAS,
1989). These publications provided leadership for the era
of standards-based reform. Still, as Paul DeHart Hurd
argued, standards are fine, but they are not a reinvention
(Hurd, 1999).
The basic idea of standards-based reform was to establish
policies of clear, coherent, and challenging content as
learning outcomes for K-12 education. The assumption
was that voluntary national standards would be used by
state education departments and local jurisdictions for
selection for educational programs, use of instructional
practices, and implementation of assessments that
would help students attain the standards. An additional
assumption was that undergraduate teacher education
and professional development for classroom teachers
also would align with standards. The basic idea may
sound reasonable, but in reality it did not quite work
as envisioned. The many independent decisions about
teacher preparation, textbooks, tests, and teaching
resulted in less influence than desired for national
standards (NRC, 2002). This said, the standards for
science (NRC, 1996) have had a positive influence on the
educational system, especially on state standards and
curriculum materials (DeBoer, 2006).
22 • Technology and Engineering Teacher • February 2011