Engineering Design in the Classroom: Is it Good Science Education or Is it Revolting?

0
639

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of the incorporation of engineering design into secondary classrooms by math, science, and technology teachers who were alumni of a week-Iong intensive inservice course at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College (New Hampshire). Data collection methods included observations and interviews, surveys, written materials, and site visits. Results indicate that about three-quarters of the teachers effected a full implementation of the problem-solving method during the first year following the workshop. Other findings include: (1) math teachers were less likely to have their students build concrete models and less likely to do any implementation than science teachers; (2) implementrAion was most common in a teacher’s highest-ability class; (3) some teachers were genuinely surprised by the resistance that students expressed to doing the projects; and (4) teachers were candid in admitting that they did not cover subject matter content that they had covered previously in their teaching. It was concluded that engineering design is good science education as it incorporates imaginative views on teaching about technology and society and can engage students in sociologically authentic science. However, engineering design is also revolting, since its implementation rrquires that teachers rethink what it means to teach science. Contains 27 references. (JRH) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *

PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL AS BEEN BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Engineering Design in the Classroom: Is it Good Science Education or Is it Revolting? William S. Car Ise& Cornell University U.S. DEPAIRMENT OF EDUCATION Office ot Educational Relearns and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This doCument has been rePtod.cCI s iced trom the person or organization originating it 0 Minor chino*, have been made to Improve reproduction ()utility Pemts ot WeVY or opinions stated in t his docu mint do not necessarily represent off.c,al OERI position or oohCy The title of this paper is loosely based on Edwin Layton’s (1986) book, The revolt of the engineers: Social responsibility and the American engineering profession. Layton’s revolution concerns an historical tension between two views of engineering: a view emphasizing the important fr) scientific and manageriai roles that engineers played in businesses, versus a view emphasizing the cal professional compact between engineers and the public. In the former view,engineers’ loyalties were to their companies and their companies’ interests. In the latter view, engineers were asked to recognize their obligation to practice with a view to the common, public good, and to concern themselves particularly with the social impacts of technology; their loyalties were supposed to transcend company interests. The “revolt” in Layton’s history was a painful shift within the profession from one view of engineering to another.2 Parallels to this tension exist in the history of the science curriculum. Should the ch … misty curriculum, for example, concern itself primarily with chemistry as a structured body of scientific knowledge (the “company loyalty” model, where the “company” is the academic discipline of chemistry) or with the social consequences of the application of chemistry, chemical technologies, or technologies that have chemical impacts on society (the “public interest” model)? Although these two views of science educationdisciplinary science versus science applied toward (nonacademic) public needs–have had periods of both ascendancy and decline (Bybee & DeBoer, 1994; DeBoer, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, St. Louis, MO, March 30 April 3, 1996. The author’s address is Department of Education, Kennedy Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853; email wsc2@corn, il.edu. 2 The first edition of Layton’s book focused on American engineering between 19C J and 1945, and documented the growth (and subsequent decline) of an ideology of the engineer as social change agent. In the second edition, Layton updated his analysis to the near-present, and left us at the dawn of modern scientific engineering, where engineers are taught in university programs that begin with intensive study of calculus, physics, molecular biology, and other sciences. This more recent change might be viewed as a second revolution, the replacement of engineering by engineering science, a revolution that is still taking place. 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE Engineering Design p. 2 1991), for most of the past three decades, notwithstanding efforts like Science for All (UNESCO, 1983) and the Science-Technology-Society movement (Solomon & Aikenhead, 1994), the disciplinary view of science education has largely held sway. Today, the narrow disciplinary view of the science curriculum is undergoing radical revision; ironically, much of this revision appears to have been stimulated by mainstream scientific groups like the American Association for the Advancement of Science, whose Project 2061 publications provided a content blueprint for the new National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996). In both 2061’s Benchmarks (AAAS, 1993) and the Standards, among the central themes are technology, technological design, and the social impacts of technology. In contrast, the National Science Teachers Association’s flagship curriculum reform initiative has appeared reluctant to expand its content focus beyond traditional disciplinary structures. Its first detailed curriculum guide made practically no reference to technology, for example;3 its most recent publication imaginatively repackages the NRC’s Standards so that standards concerning technology and the nature and application of technology are separated from “science subject matter” and practically relegated to footnote status.4 In all fairness, progressive efforts by professional science teachers’ associations like NSTA have often evinced little action by teachers; as Fensham (1992) has noted: 3 A quick and dirty comparison on this dimension can be done using the book indexes of AAAS’s and NSTA’s content frameworks. Under,the heading, “Technology,” the Benchmarks index provides 65 different page-number citations on 44 topics. NSTA’s Content Core (National Science Teachers Association, 1993) has no listings at all under “Technology,” nor under “Engineering,” “Design,” “Agriculture,” “Communication,” “Computers,” or “Materials”–technology-related topics frequently cited in Project 2061 publications. 4 The NSTA publication (Aldridge, 1995) divides NRC’s “Content Standards” into two parts. Part One, titled “Science Subject Matter,” is 128 pages in length, and expands NRC’s Standards B-D, which concern the traditional physical sciences, biology, and earth and space sciences. Part Two, titled “Science Applications and Processes,” is 12 pages in length, and cove s NRC’s Standards A, E, F, and G. Thus, the book’s relative treatment of “traditional” and “appl:cations/ process” subject matter is 128 pages to 12, or more than 10:1. In contrast, the NRC doesn’t distinguish between science “subject matter” and its application: all are considered content. Nevertheless, if one maps NSTA’s distinction onto the NRC Standards, explanations of “tradi-tional” subject matter and “applications and processes” are given about 20.5 pages and 25.5 pages respectively, a ratio of 4:5! (Vignettes were ignored in page counts, because they referenced multiple standards, and I only included the NRC sections concerning grades 5-8 and 9-12).Â