In STEM education, the engineering design process serves as a pedagogical strategy to connect science and mathematics concepts. While STEM approaches are increasingly favored in science courses, the role of mathematics in integrated STEM activities is often overlooked, despite its foundational importance across STEM disciplines. This manuscript…

Background: Dealing with uncertainties is inherent in the engineering design process and often poses challenges for young learners. This necessitates providing learners with adequate support to navigate their uncertainties effectively. However, achieving this requires a deeper understanding of the factors influencing learners' uncertainty…

Twenty-first-century skills are increasingly recognized as critical skills that today's students must develop to adapt to increasingly rapid world changes. This research aims to test the effectiveness of the STEM-EDELCY learning model to improve students' 21st-century skills. This research involved 285 junior high school students (aged 12-13) from…

Studies have indicated the importance of scaffolding in the problem-solving process, as well as the potential of integrating learning content into the troubleshooting tasks. However, few have explored in depth the learning process during troubleshooting via scaffolds while also taking students' cognitive load into account. To address this issue,…

Background: Design thinking, with its emphasis on iterative prototyping and mantra of "fail early and often," stands in stark contrast to the typical one-and-done, failure-averse culture of the classroom. Iterative prototyping and fail-forward mindsets could promote valuable iterative practices and positive reactions to failure, but…

We examined the use of an engineering learning cycle (ELC) model and in a course for K-8 inservice teachers for two purposes. First, we were interested in how the ELC would support teachers' science, mathematics, and engineering content knowledge. We were also interested in their confidence in their ability to adapt content for teaching using the…

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the experiential learning of electronics subject matter is effective in the middle school open learning of robotics. Electronics is often ignored in robotics courses. Since robotics courses are typically comprised of computer-related subjects, and mechanical and electrical engineering, these…

Engineering design is a complex process both for students to participate in and for instructors to assess. Informed designers use the key strategy of conducting experiments as they test ideas to inform next steps. Conversely, beginning designers experiment less, often with confounding variables. These behaviours are not easy to assess in…

For successful work in the classroom, it is important to create a positive climate and to involve students actively in the process of learning. The presented research focused on how the students perceived the classroom climate, and on their interest in the contents of the subject Science, Engineering and Technology (STE). 92 primary school sixth-…

The university aims to form professionals through transmission and dissemination of knowledge, therefore, the Extension, as a tool of the universities, has a major role contributing to improvements in the learning and teaching process. The Extension projects are extremely important for The Federal Technological University of Paraná (UTFPR), since…

This paper considers an approach to studying issues in technology and science, which integrates design and inquiry activities towards creating and exploring technological models of scientific phenomena. We implemented this approach in a context where the learner inquires into a biological phenomenon and develops its representation in the form of a…

This paper presents a case study examining 3rd, 4th and 5th graders' design fixation and cooperative learning in an engineering design project. A mixed methods instrument, the Cooperative Learning Observation Protocol (CLOP), was adapted to record frequency and class observation on cooperative learning engagement through detailed field notes.…

Recently, K-12 engineering education has received increased attention as a pathway to building stronger foundations in math and science and introducing young people to the profession. However, the National Academy of Engineering found that many K-12 engineering programs focus heavily on engineering design and science and math learning while…

Meat thermometers can be awkward to use in terms of placement and avoidance of bones. Because of these problems, each year 30 million Thanksgiving turkeys have a built-in thermometer that pops up when the turkey is properly cooked. Turkey timers are an example of how engineering solved a common, everyday problem. The following 5E learning cycle…

These proceedings contain the papers of the IADIS International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2013), October 22-24, 2013, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by The University of North Texas (UNT), sponsored by the…