Aikaterini Bagiati

Engineering curriculum in the preschool classroom: the teacher's experience

The study presented here focuses on the development of an early education Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum with emphasis on engineering. This article presents the teachers experience as she undertook the task of familiarising herself with the new content and using the curriculum in a university based lab-school classroom in the US. More specifically, the article describes and analyses the collaboration between the teacher and the curriculum developer. It also presents facilitators and barriers during the implementation, as identified by the teacher and the researchers, reports on the multiple stakeholders involved, and raises questions for future research. Engineering education in the precollege years is a developing academic discipline that stems from the need to understand and improve the ways engineers are formally educated. The belief of early experiences as determinants of later experiences has long constituted a basis of educational planning. Therefore, identifying the appropriate age and manner in which early childhood education becomes part of engineering education, is very important in the current climate.

Practicing Engineering While Building with Blocks: Identifying Engineering Thinking.

Childrens free play naturally enhances skills of observation, communication, experimentation, as well as development of rationale and construction skills. These domains, while synthesised, can lead to the development of certain process models regarding the way constructions could be designed, built and improved. The Design Process model constitutes a core concept of engineering. Blocks seem to be one of the best tools to use in order to work towards the development of such a model. This is a qualitative observational study in preschoolers’ free playing with blocks. Eighteen children aged three- to five-years-old were observed and videotaped for four months to examine whether young children can demonstrate instances of precursors to engineering behaviour while building, by demonstrating similarities to the Design Process. Analysis of the video data showed that children demonstrated and articulated goal-oriented design, problem-solving thinking, innovation stemming out of synthesis of multiple designs, pattern repetition (PR) and design testing (DT).

Identifying Engineering in a PreK Classroom: An Observation Protocol to Support Guided Project-Based Instruction

This chapter presents an early engineering curriculum for the PreK classroom, justifies the developmental appropriateness of the curriculum by presenting relevant research studies, and concludes with the introduction of an observation protocol to be used by class teachers to identify and evaluate engineering learning. In early education engineering related resources are still very limited. Scattered activities or small scale engineering lesson plans can be found for a teacher to use in class mostly lacking appropriate assessment tools. Additional obstacles center on teacher preparedness and ensuing “discomfort” with engineering content, terminology, and procedures. Limited exposure to engineering content reputed as a difficult discipline requiring rigorous specialization, makes most teachers apprehensive and very reluctant to explore and introduce it in the curriculum. The early engineering curriculum discussed here was developed and implemented in a PreK classroom for 4 months. Student learning and the teacher experience were at the center of the research. The proposed observation protocol was designed in alignment with the research findings. Observation is a powerful tool and in this case it is used to inform assessment in early education. The protocol is expected to assist PreK teachers in developing deep understanding of how to identify and evaluate engineering learning in class.

Developing Professional Skills in Undergraduate Engineering Students Through Cocurricular Involvement

As nations have sought to keep pace with rapid technological innovation, governments have renewed their focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, with emphasis on developing both technical and non-technical skills in STEM students. This article examines which engineering-relevant skills may be developed by participation in cocurricular activities by creating a literature-based framework of skills and attributes developed through categories of undergraduate involvement. The authors then validate this framework using two methods.

Work-in-Progress: SUTD Winter Abroad Program at MIT: Collaborative learning as a pathway towards intitutional transplantation

This Work in Progress paper discusses the development and implementation of the first Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) Winter Abroad Program (SWAP) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This is a student abroad program where SUTD students travel to MIT for three weeks during the MIT Independent Activities Period (IAP) to attend courses alongside MIT students, experience the MIT academic culture, and learn lifelong skills for improved collaboration in teams. During the first year, the MIT-SUTD Collaboration office conducted a pilot evaluation of the program to understand the level of interaction and collaboration between MIT and SUTD participants. In 2015 SWAP 17 out of the 23 classes comprised by the program employed group work and various digital or physical collaborative learning pedagogies. The program developers are currently working on adjustments to the program and on a new evaluation plan regarding the 2016 SWAP.

Design based wilderness education: A cross-cultural experience in engineering education

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been collaborating since 2010 with the Singapore Ministry of Education to help develop the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). One element of this collaboration, the Global Leadership Program (GLP), aims to provide SUTD students with the opportunity to interact with the MIT community and experience MITs academic culture, while at the same time participating in programming to assist with the development of leadership skills. This paper describes a curriculum combining the pedagogies of design-based learning and wilderness education that was implemented in the summer of 2014 as a component of GLP. Wilderness education was selected as a pedagogical framework for this program as it may be well suited to create effective learning environments for engineering education, cross-cultural learning, and fostering conceptual change. Through design activities both for and in a natural environment, students were encouraged to develop competency in engineering science while exploring the diverse attributes essential for success as an engineer.