Collaborative Research: Design Talks: Building Community with Elementary Engineering

在小学课堂中加入工程设计活动已经变得越来越普遍，教师们对工程教学的基础也变得更加熟悉。现在有必要也有机会了解教师可以采取的不同方法，以支持学生加深对工程设计内容、知识和工程实践的理解。虽然许多现有的K-12学前工程教育方法强调解决问题和开发工程解决方案，但这个项目也探索了课堂对话如何让孩子们理解他们正在解决的问题，并在做出设计决策时突出伦理道德。为了让孩子们有机会参与丰富的课堂对话，项目团队使用了一种基于社区的工程课程方法，让学生解决影响当地学校社区的问题。这种以讨论为中心、以社区为基础的工程课程方法有望为儿童提供练习理智和决策技能的机会，并培养以关怀为中心的工程设计工作的观点。为了完成这个项目，研究人员与两名小学教师延长了持续的合作伙伴关系，以实施基于社区的讨论丰富的工程课程方法，并收集小学生工程设计对话的录像。这些视频将使用话语分析来生成基于证据的理论，该理论基于课堂话语的特征和动态，支持小学生在工程设计背景下的知识建构，以及关于教师如何激励他们并吸引所有学生有意义的参与的理论。通过提供额外的资源和智力框架来调查和促进工程设计中有意义的学科论述，该项目将支持两名合作教师在三年内向他们的八名同事学徒，从事以社区为基础的工程和设计谈话工作。这一合作将开发资源，支持教师和学生参与更多关于设计的关怀和伦理讨论。具体地说，项目团队将为1-6年级的课堂教师创建一个设计演讲资源的在线视频库。“设计谈话”网站将使小学教师能够看到不同类型的课堂对话，这些对话使基础工程不仅是学生制造产品的场所，也是建立知识的场所。探索研究预科-12项目(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高预科-12年级学生和教师在科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)方面的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供了理论和经验上的证明。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Inclusion of engineering design activities in elementary classrooms has become increasingly common, and teachers are becoming more comfortable with the basics of teaching engineering. There is now a need and an opportunity to understand different approaches teachers can take to support students to deepen their understanding of engineering design content knowledge and engineering practices. While many existing approaches to preK-12 engineering education emphasize problem solving and the development of engineering solutions, this project also explores how classroom conversations can engage children in making sense of the problems that they are addressing and foregrounding ethics while making design decisions. To provide children with opportunities to engage in rich classroom conversations, the project team uses a community-based engineering curricular approach, where students address problems that affect their local school communities. The discussion-focused, community-based engineering curricular approach has promise in providing opportunities for children to practice sense-making and decision-making skills and also develop a perspective of care as central to engineering design work. To accomplish this project, the researchers extend an ongoing partnership with two elementary teachers to implement the discussion-rich community-based engineering curricular approach and collect video-recordings of the elementary students’ engineering design conversations. The videos will be analyzed using discourse analysis to generate evidence-based theory on the characteristics and dynamics of classroom talk that support elementary students’ knowledge construction in engineering design contexts, as well as theory on how teachers prompt them and elicit meaningful participation from all students. By providing additional resources and an intellectual framework for investigating and prompting meaningful disciplinary discourse in engineering design, the project will support the two partner teachers to apprentice eight of their colleagues over three years into the work of community-based engineering and design talk. This collaboration will develop resources that will support teachers and students to engage in more caring, ethical discourse around design. Specifically, the project team will create an online video library of design talk resources for grade 1-6 classroom teachers. The “Design Talk” website will enable elementary teachers to see distinctly different kinds of classroom conversations that make elementary engineering a site for students not just to build products, but also to build knowledge.The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.