Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

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notion of “cold conceptual change” that suggests that conceptual change depends nearly
exclusively on students’ prior knowledge and experiences. They suggest, that students’
goals, values, self-efficacy and control beliefs all significantly influence conceptual change.
Conceptual Change in K-12 Engineering
Engineering is not a strongly conceptual domain, which limits the applicability of theories
of conceptual change that presume stable, theory-like alternative conceptions. Science
concepts are different from engineering concepts in terms of necessity: To walk, drive a
car, or throw a piece of garbage in a trash can requires an intuitive understanding of
mechanics and the physics of motion. To understand medical treatments, care for a child
or pet, or procreation requires at least a basic model of biology. Cooking or cleaning
requires a basic model of chemistry. Existence forces us to develop basic science
conceptions, which become either the naïve theories or p-prims that provide the building
blocks or necessitate conceptual change, depending on if one subscribes to a “knowledge
in pieces” or “naïve theories” view of conceptual change. If engineering is defined as the
process of developing a technology to solve a particular problem, existence does not foster
the development of engineer in the same way that it fosters the development of personal
scientific theories, thus leaving the K-12 engineering student with fewer alternative
conceptions that need to be addressed. One can be a fairly adept user and consumer of
technology without an underlying understanding of how that technology was created or
why it works. Research on conceptual change in K-12 engineering therefore tends to take
the form of studies that focus on understanding students’ misconceptions about the nature
and practice of engineering as explored through assessment like the Draw an Engineer test
(Cunningham & Lachapelle, 2007).
Script theory shows much greater potential for explaining conceptual change in K-12
engineering. Engineering design has been identified as a critical aspect of K-12
engineering (NAE Committee on K-12 Engineering Education, 2009), and teaching
students an engineering design process provides an illustrative example of how scripts
can be used to explain engineering. As part of everyday life, most students develop an
engineering script to solve problems that involves creating a solution and testing it. This
script is repeated until a satisfactory solution is found. This script can be modified to
develop a more nuance model of engineering design that brings in factors like customers,
constraints due to available resources, and using testing of the design and other sources of
data to inform revisions of the design.
Engineering can provide a context for building connection between mathematics and
science concepts which can help students to develop a deeper understanding of
mathematics and science. Applying mathematics and science concepts to the solution of
real world problems can lead to measurable gains in understanding (Schnittka, Bell, &
Richards, 2009). Drawing from diSessa’s (1998) model, engineering can serve as the
conceptual network that ties together concepts from mathematics and science and
encourage the development of broadly applicable engineering habits of mind like
optimization and working with constraints.
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011