Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 645 de 957
education, resources are still very limited. Scattered activities or small scale engineering
lesson plans can be found for a teacher to use in class, mainly presented without an
assessment tool (Bagiati & Evangelou, 2009); but no outreach programs, standards, or
complete PreK-3 engineering curriculum setting a clear teaching philosophy, learning
goals, and assessment tools exist yet (Bagiati, Yoon, Evangelou, & Ngambeki, 2010).
In addition to the lack of valid engineering curricula for the early years, obstacles appear
to be teacher uneasiness with engineering content, terminology, and procedures. Limited
exposure to such content, in addition to its reputation as a difficult discipline that requires
rigorous specialization, makes most teachers feel inadequately prepared to deal with it in
the curriculum (Bagiati, Yoon, Evangelou, & Ngambeki, 2010).
Despite the nascent state of the field of early engineering education, recent research
indicates that during free play or interaction with familiar or unfamiliar artefacts, children
demonstrate curiosity, interest, motivation, and the capacity to draw inferences
(Evangelou, Dobbs-Oats, Bagiati, Liang, & Choi, 2010). Furthermore children demonstrate
the ability to perform and complete age appropriate simple engineering and design related
tasks, even if they have very limited exposure to engineering content or terminology
(Johnsey, 1993; Fleer, 2000). These behaviours, it is suggested, can be perceived as
precursors to engineering thinking (Brophy & Evangelou 2007).
Research Question
The current study investigates a semester-long, age-appropriate engineering design-based
curriculum, and will identify whether this curriculum is a way of achieving higher
knowledge integration of STEM in a preschool classroom. For the remainder of the paper
the term “STEM” will refer to the integration of science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics, and the early engineering curriculum (EEC) will refer to the curriculum
developed in current study under the assumption that this is addressing the STEM
integration, with primary emphasis on the engineering component. The study employs a
view of engineering as a disciplinary domain that uses math, science, and technology as
tools, but which also requires synthetic ability, design, problem solving, organization, and
construction skills, and incorporates various types of communication as well. From this
viewpoint, engineering is thus more than the sum of the STEM parts; it is indeed the
integrative nature of engineering that makes it appealing in an educational context
(Brophy and Evangelou, 2007).
The following research question guides this study:
What type of children’s STEM learning might occur as children participate in a
developmentally appropriate STEM curriculum?
Theoretical and methodological framework
Preschool curriculum can be seen as a form of intervention specifically aimed at the
achievement of developmental goals through the delivery of specific educational content.
This function of the curriculum is used to incorporate engineering content and investigate
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011