Trade-off decisions, which necessitate striking a balance between two or more desirable but competing features, are a crucial part of design practice. However, they are known to be difficult for student designers to make. While designers, educators, and researchers have numerous methods to assess the quality of design artifacts, these methods are…

The focus of this article is to serve as an introduction to engineering principles in beam design using a lab activity. The concepts and skills learned in this article will lead students into concrete beam and form design and fabrication as well as the ability to precisely predict the amount of weight a concrete beam will hold during testing. An…

Technology and Engineering Education (T&EE) includes "engineering design challenges" to establish a connection to designing and problem-solving indicative of being an Engineer. Engineering design challenges involving bridges (or towers) have been a common feature of the discipline. These bridge design challenges ask students to…

Practices that take into account youth and adult education (YAE) are still rare in the literature.The present work applied an investigative activity with YAE students from the last year of middle education, in the discipline of sciences, about the methods of construction of science and tests of variables. From the categorization of metacognitive…

Given that interest is associated with learning in educational research, understanding how its development can be supported in different learning contexts represents an important line of inquiry. In this study, we investigate the influence of the slowmation construction process on middle school students' interest in learning science and geology.…

This research presents two case studies on how human-centered design process can help the students find their purpose in making and designing in a constructionist learning-environment. Human-centered design guides students to deeper understanding of others' needs and encourages them to think and act collaboratively and creatively. When the…

Success and failure in formal mathematics education has been used to legitimize stratification. We describe participatory design research as a methodology for systemic repair. The analysis describes epistemic authority--exercising the right or the power to know--as a form of agency in processes of mathematical problem solving and learning. We…

On a Monday morning in July, a fan as tall as a refrigerator churned noisily in the cavernous classroom. As the outdoor temperature crept higher, teenage girls wearing hardhats and safety glasses wiped perspiration and sawdust from their faces. This was not a field trip. This was the second hour of camp at Ranken Technical College in St. Louis,…

This project is for a team of students (groups of two or three are ideal) to design and construct a model of a single-span bridge, using plastic drinking straws as the building material. All steps of the design, construction, testing and critiquing stages should be recorded by students in a journal. Students may like to include labelled diagrams,…

If you want to get the attention of a group of eighth grade math students, tell them they are going to build a life-size cardboard boat. To increase interest, follow up this statement by telling them that two to four of them will actually be rowing this boat across a small pond. Eighth grade math students at Oasis Charter Middle School in…

This article describes an after-school program at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf (HMS), the oldest public day school for deaf students in the United States, where almost half of the student body imagined and created bridge and robotic machines. The Deaf Robotics Engineering and Math Team, or the DREAM Team club, included HMS students in…

Introducing technology education students to the field of home inspection gives them a great opportunity to learn about and apply construction technology content. In working with his 8th-grade students, the author covers the purpose of a home inspection, the dynamic of home inspections, the process involved in inspecting schools and homes and…

Research has shown that certain ways of teaching can make a difference in whether students learn standards-based content. Many strategies have proven to be effective in teaching literacy, mathematics, science and social studies. These strategies have facilitated blending academic and career/technical subjects to make learning more meaningful for…

This textbook is second in a series of three volumes presenting a mathematics course for junior high school and six-year high schools. This volume covers algebra, and arithmetic related to trade, transportation, industry, building, banking, corporations, home life, farming, community life, civic life, investments, and mensuration. [For Book I, see…