Effects of infusing the engineering design process into STEM project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers\u2019 engineering design thinking

Kuen-Yi Lin,Yi-Ting Hsu,P John Williams,Ying-Tien Wu

doi:10.1186/s40594-020-00258-9

Abstract

BackgroundThis study focuses on probing preservice technology teachers’ cognitive structures and how they construct engineering design in technology-learning activities and explores the effects of infusing an engineering design process into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers’ cognitive structures for engineering design thinking.ResultsThe study employed a quasi-experimental design, and twenty-eight preservice technology teachers participated in the teaching experiment. The flow-map method and metalistening technique were utilized to enable preservice technology teachers to create flow maps of engineering design, and a chi-square test was employed to analyze the data. The results suggest that (1) applying the engineering design process to STEM project-based learning is beneficial for developing preservice technology teachers’ schema of design thinking, especially with respect to clarifying the problem, generating ideas, modeling, and feasibility analysis, and (2) it is important to encourage teachers to further explore the systematic concepts of engineering design thinking and expand their abilities by merging the engineering design process into STEM project-based learning.ConclusionsThe findings of this study provide initial evidence on the effects of infusing the engineering design process into STEM project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers’ engineering design thinking. However, further work should focus on exploring how to overcome the weaknesses of preservice technology teachers’ engineering design thinking by adding a few elements of engineering design thinking pedagogy, e.g., designing learning activities that are relevant to real life.

Highlights

An increasing number of position papers and empirical studies have focused on exploring the issues of engineering design thinking (Brand, 2020; English & King, 2015)
The aforementioned studies suggest that the cognitive structures of technology teachers in engineering design will affect their use of technological pedagogical approaches oriented toward engineering design and determine the quality of STEM education implementation. To address this gap in the literature, this study focuses on the cognitive structure of preservice technology teachers in engineering design to probe their understanding of engineering design thinking
Since this study focused mainly on the cognitive structure used by preservice technology teachers in engineering design thinking, this study followed Tsai and Huang’s (2002) suggestion in using the flow-map method to explore preservice technology teachers’ cognitive structure and avoid the limitations of free word association, controlled work association, tree construction, and concept mapping

Summary

Introduction

An increasing number of position papers and empirical studies have focused on exploring the issues of engineering design thinking (Brand, 2020; English & King, 2015). With regard to the cognitive structure of technology teachers in engineering design, Atman et al (2007) studied the differences between expert practitioners and students during the engineering design process. Sung and Kelley (2018) performed a sequential analysis study on the design thinking of fourth-grade elementary students and found that idea generation plays an important role throughout their design thinking process These studies suggest that students and teachers at different levels focus on different parts of the design process: idea generation is the most important part of the process for elementary school students; predictive analysis and testing/revising are more important for high school students; and technology teachers tend to focus on prototype construction and redesign. This study focuses on probing preservice technology teachers’ cognitive structures and how they construct engineering design in technology-learning activities and explores the effects of infusing an engineering design process into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers’ cognitive structures for engineering design thinking

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion