Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 477 de 957
Methodological Framework and Research Design
Methodological Framework
The methodological framework used in this study was Action Research. “Action research is
learning by doing - a group of people identify a problem, do something to resolve it, see
how successful their efforts were, and if not satisfied, try again” (O’Brien, 1998, p. 3). In
the case of the context map study, a facilitator conducted an engineering intervention with
students in grades two to five (primary school). During the course of the year, curriculum
was refined and improved to best meet student learning needs. The intervention was
created based on several years of pre-college engineering education research conducted
by the Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning (INSPIRE), housed at Purdue
University. INSPIRE has several long-term goals, including improving pre-college
engineering literacy and providing early engineering interventions.
Participants
The research took place in an independent school in the Midwest of the USA. Students
were involved in an engineering class two days a week, with each engineering session
lasting fifty minutes. The students were taught using a Discovery Learning approach, with
a focus on allowing students the freedom to explore and interpret information to allow for
construction of individual knowledge (van Joolingen, 1999). The participants were second
through fifth grade students (approximately aged seven to eleven years). Within each of
the third, fourth, and fifth grade classes, certain students were identified as “Affinity”
students. These students exhibited particular affinity towards engineering as
demonstrated through higher order questioning, excellent leadership and communication,
an ability to function creatively and effectively with constraints through iterative design,
and possessing a keen ability for problem solving. The students were grouped into four
random groups, with each group receiving engineering instruction for a quarter of the
school year (i.e., the first group receives engineering during the first quarter; the second
group received engineering during the second quarter, etc.). The focus of this paper is on
the first quarter students. Participant information can be found in Table One.
Table 1: Participant Information
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011