Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 487 de 957
Conceptual Change in Precollege Engineering
Noah Salzman
nsalzman@purdue.edu
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
United States of America
Johannes Strobel
jstrobel@purdue.edu
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
United States of America
Abstract: Conceptual change is the process where an individual’s understanding
of a particular process or phenomenon changes to a more sophisticated,
accurate, or expertlike understanding of the same phenomenon. Although well
utilized in the learning sciences, conceptual change has not been used as a
theoretical framework for engineering education research. This paper provides
an overview of conceptual change theories for the engineering education
research community. These theories can be broadly divided into either
revolutionary or evolutionary approaches to conceptual change. An overview of
these two categories is provided, along with the differences in how they address
various aspects of conceptual change theory. The paper concludes with a
theoretical exploration of the relevance of these theories to precollege
engineering education.
Introduction
Conceptual change is the process where an individual’s understanding of a particular
process or phenomenon changes to a more sophisticated, accurate, or expert
understanding of the same phenomenon. Conceptual change is one of the most used
theories in the learning sciences. Although well researched in the natural sciences,
especially physics, conceptual change has not been commonly utilized as a theoretical
framework for engineering education research, particularly for understanding engineering
learning at the K-12 level. While searching for published material on conceptual change
and engineering, one is most likely to find articles that either (a) assess the effect of
engineering on science concepts (for example, see Schnittka & Bell’s, 2011 article
Engineering Design and Conceptual Change in Science: Addressing thermal energy and
heat transfer in eighth grade) or (b) articles, which describe exclusively the scientific
aspects of engineering (for example, see: Krause, Kelly, Tasooji, Corkins, Baker, & Purzer’s,
(2010) Effect of pedagogy on conceptual change in an introductory materials science
course”). It is puzzling, why there seem to be no clearly developed unique concepts in the
domain of engineering. It might be partially explained by engineering being commonly
defined as the practical application of science and math and so other conceptual domains
might not be seen necessary. Still, the fact that the conceptual basis of engineering seems
to be entirely borrowed from other domains requires further investigation. The purpose of
this paper is twofold: (1) to provide an introduction into the different models of
conceptual change and (2) assess the usefulness and adequacy of different models in order
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011