Insights on students' own authentic design practices--nascent design practices without much adult guidance--are crucial to informing responsive facilitation of engineering design tasks. This study unpacks how elementary students interpret teacher given information about a design task, and interact with each other and given resources, to traverse a…

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and 3D printing are not new technologies but are technologies which, in recent years, have become more accessible to hobbyists and enthusiasts. Engaging with these technologies allows the user to investigate and manipulate virtual and physical 3D shapes, which may affect spatial awareness. The literature suggests that…

This research conducted with third graders examined a teacher and her students as they transformed their traditional writing workshop to a designing workshop. Using the New London Group's (1996) pedagogy of multiliteracies and Katie Wood Ray's (2006) units of study as frameworks, students participated in a unit of study on informational texts.…

With the increasing importance of teaching STEM to young students, the engineering design process (EDP) has become a popular learning platform in K-12 STEM education. The engineering design process guides students in solving engineering problems, but there is a lack of understanding of how students utilize this process. In this study, we explored…

This paper reports on a large clinical study with 193 children (Grades 3-6) who interacted with 12 digital math games during clinical interviews. Children completed a pretest, interacted with the digital math games, completed a posttest, and answered questions about their interactions with the games. During the interviews, researchers used two…

The activity presented in this article is an engaging engineering challenge that has been conducted with third- through fifth-grade students in school classrooms and during after-school programs. This article describes the hands-on activity as appropriate for fifth graders that supports the "Next Generation Science Standards." This…

The design of textbooks used in teaching and learning processes is of great importance to each level of education from pre-primary through to higher education. Textbooks, especially at primary level, include lots of visual images. It is, therefore, of crucial importance to resort to effective and proper ways of using visual design elements in…

An understanding of how sensemaking unfolds when elementary students engage in engineering design tasks is crucial to advancing engineering teaching and learning at K-12 levels. Sensemaking has been widely studied in the context of science as a discipline. In this paper, we seek to contribute to the more nascent efforts to build theory about the…

The presence of digital technologies in classroom settings is relentlessly getting stronger and has shown to have powerful playful qualities. In recent years, digital game-based learning (DGBL) has been introduced in schools. In this paper we explore game-based design activities to unfold playful and creative actions and interactions among…

In this article, we discuss embodied mathematical practices in the context of learners' board game (re)design activities. By focusing on "redesigning" a board game as a pedagogical approach, rather than designing one from scratch, we intended to limit the vast creative design possibilities and engage learners more deeply with the…

In this article, the authors unveil the Trade Book Inquiry Design Model (IDM) blueprint. Anchored in a compelling question inspired by a trade book, the new blueprint is broken into two instructional blocks: "Reading and Comprehension" and "Living Social Studies." The inquiry template is designed to be instructionally efficient…

Recent science educational reforms in the United States have prompted increased efforts to teach engineering design as an approach to improve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) learning in K-12 classrooms. Teaching design in early grades is a new endeavor for teachers in the United States. Much can be learned from design…

eTwinning projects support teachers and students from different countries to engage with each other through online learning. In 2020, the world started to battle with the pandemic and this shifted educational practices from face to face to online learning. In this study, we tried to understand how the pandemic influenced the activity planning,…

Get an inside look at the discourse interactions of third- and fourth-grade students as they consider various design proposals to solve an engineering problem and negotiate a group decision. The authors present possible factors that impact student teamwork and provide recommendations for teachers to develop students' skills for group engineering…

21st century educational reform initiatives value creativity, collaboration, innovation, and higher-order thinking (Scardamalia, 2002), the skills needed for students to successfully address the complex engineering challenges facing society. "A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practice, Crosscutting Concepts and Core Ideas" (NRC,…