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Exploring How Experience with Planning Impacts First Grade Students’ Planning and Solutions to Engineering Design Problem

Investigators

Merredith Portsmore & Chris Rogers

Funding Source

This research is funded by a Karol Fellowship.

Research Overview

K-12 Engineering Education is a innovative an powerful movement in U.S Education.  Design is one of the fundamental components of engineering that is being introduced in many classrooms.  However, how to teach design is an area of research at all levels.  At the early elementary level, we know very little about how best to teach children the basic components of design.  This study aims to examines how engaging children in planning impacts their planning abilities. In addition, it looks to describe how young children identify and understand engineering design problems.

Research Questions

Planning

   •    What is the impact of having students engage in planning on the quality of their solution to engineering design problems in the classroom?
   •    What is the impact of having students engage in planning on the time needed to create their solution to engineering design problems in the classroom?
   •    What is the relationship between experience planning and performance on tasks that require planning?

Problems

   •    What problems do first grade students identify?

Methods

This study, still in development, will use qualitative methods for documenting classroom interactions.  In addition, students performance on tasks used in the pre and post assessments will be evaluated to generate a performance score.