S. Selcen Guzey

Approaches to Integrating Engineering in STEM Units and Student Achievement Gains

This study examined different approaches to integrating engineering practices in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum units. These various approaches were correlated with student outcomes on engineering assessment items. There are numerous reform documents in the USA and around the world that emphasize the need to incorporate engineering into science education. The authors of this study contend that different approaches to integrating engineering in STEM units correlate to larger student achievement gains in engineering, based on assessment items developed from the Framework for Quality K–12 Engineering Education (Moore, Glancy, Tank, Kersten, & Smith, 2014). The goal of this work is not to establish one singular working definition for how to integrate the disciplines of STEM but rather to focus on characteristics of integrating engineering within STEM curricular units that are associated with higher student achievement gains in engineering for the students involved in this study. The results indicate that when engineering is introduced at the beginning of the unit to provide context for the learning, and revisited throughout the duration of the unit, student achievement gains with engineering assessment items are greater than when engineering is incorporated only at the end of the unit as a design challenge in the form of a culminating project.

Students’ Successes and Challenges Applying Data Analysis and Measurement Skills in a Fifth-Grade Integrated STEM Unit

An understanding of statistics and skills in data analysis are becoming more and more essential, yet research consistently shows that students struggle with these concepts at all levels. This case study documents some of the struggles four groups of fifth-grade students encounter as they collect, organize, and interpret data and then ultimately attempt to draw conclusions or make decisions based on these data. The activities in which the students engaged were part of an integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) unit that had students collecting and analyzing data both in the context of learning science concepts and in the context of evaluating prototypes for an engineering design challenge. Students were observed to struggle in a variety of ways, specifically having difficulty (1) properly using certain measurement devices, (2) coordinating quantitative data with the phenomenon being measured, and (3) properly interpreting the significance of variation, uncertainty, and error in the data. Implications for teaching and curriculum design are addressed.

Engaging High School Students in Modeling and Simulation through Educational Media

The new AP CS Principles curriculum has a significant component regarding modeling and simulation, and many teachers will need to figure out how to accomplish this in their classroom. We have developed a new publicly available media-enhanced approach for teaching modeling and simulation, designated as TrafficJam. The approach consists of two core activities, both of which involve students optimizing traffic signals (also known as traffic lights, or stoplights). TrafficJam is likely best distinguished from other classroom simulation exercises in that these activities are introduced, motivated, and demonstrated in a video created by Twin Cities Public Television (TPT). The video uses an inquiry-driven format to feature four high school students who take on the task of improving signal timing in their own neighborhood. A pilot study of TrafficJam in four schools indicates that students find the video engaging, the activities relevant and interesting, and that they gain understanding of modeling and simulation from the experience.

Representational Fluency: A Means for Students to Develop STEM Literacy

The problems that we face in our ever-changing, increasingly global society are multidisciplinary, and many require the integration of multiple Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) concepts to solve them. These problems are the driving force behind national calls for more and stronger students in the pipeline to enter into STEM fields (National Academy of Sciences 2006; National Center on Education and the Economy [NCEE] 2007). However, attempts to motivate students to want to enter the current pipeline into STEM fields is most likely not going to work. What is needed is a new trajectory to success that focuses on understandings and abilities that are more consistent with the new kinds of math/science/engineering thinking that are emerging to be most important in a technology-based age of information. As the problems in this technology-based age are multidisciplinary in nature, we believe that a STEM integration approach must be used to prepare students to be competitive in the twenty-first century. Therefore, research needs to be done that helps realize the most effective ways for students to learn and engage with STEM concepts in a multi-disciplinary manner, teachers to understand and implement STEM integration approaches, and curriculum to be developed to foster these new multi-disciplinary understandings in the classroom. In this paper, we focus on representational fluency within STEM integration in the K-12 system.

Negotiating Science and Engineering: An Exploratory Case Study of a Reform-Minded Science Teacher.

ABSTRACT Engineering has been slowly integrated into K-12 science classrooms in the United States as the result of recent science education reforms. Such changes in science teaching require that a science teacher is confident with and committed to content, practices, language, and cultures related to both science and engineering. However, from the perspective of the science teacher, this would require not only the development of knowledge and pedagogies associated with engineering, but also the construction of new identities operating within the reforms and within the context of their school. In this study, a middle school science teacher was observed and interviewed over a period of nine months to explore his experiences as he adopted new values, discourses, and practices and constructed his identity as a reform-minded science teacher. Our findings revealed that, as the teacher attempted to become a reform-minded science teacher, he constantly negotiated his professional identities – a dynamic process that created conflicts in his classroom practices. Several differences were observed between the teacher’s science and engineering instruction: hands-on activities, depth and detail of content, language use, and the way the teacher positioned himself and his students with respect to science and engineering. Implications for science teacher professional development are discussed.