Background: Existing research points to the role of Eurocentric epistemic values - scientific objectivity, value-neutrality, depoliticization, and technical rationality - as a cornerstone of engineering ways of thinking, knowing, and doing. However, less is known about the role of Eurocentric epistemologies in team communication and decision…

Background: Understanding the nature of engineering is important for shaping engineering education, especially precollege education. While much research has established the pedagogical benefits of teaching engineering in kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12), the philosophical foundations of engineering remain under-examined. Purpose: This…

Background: Engineers are socialized to value rational approaches to problem solving. A lack of awareness of how engineers use different decision-making approaches is problematic because it perpetuates the ongoing development of inequitable engineering designs and contributes to a lack of inclusion in the field. Although researchers have explored…

Background: Sketching exists in many disciplines and varies in how it is assessed, making it challenging to define fundamental sketching skills and the characteristics of a high-quality sketch. For instructors to apply effective strategies for teaching and assessing engineering sketching, a clear summary of the constructs, metrics, and objectives…

Background: The engineering profession has changed dramatically, and engineers today must work in diverse (multidisciplinary or international) groups. As such, practice in diverse student groupwork can be beneficial to develop all-round skillsets. However, simply mixing students with different backgrounds into one group is not always effective in…

Background: Engineering programs have increasingly incorporated design challenges into courses. These design challenges vary in the degree to which they present complex, ill-structured, and relevant problems, and therefore may vary in the degree to which they support students to learn to frame design problems. Purpose/Hypothesis: We characterized…

Background: Despite the prevalence and potential of K-12 engineering outreach programs, the moment-to-moment dynamics of outreach educators' facilitation of engineering learning experiences are understudied. There is a need to identify outreach educators' teaching moves and to explore the implications of these moves. Purpose/Hypothesis: We offer a…

Background: Engineering education traditionally emphasizes technical skills, sometimes at the cost of under-preparing graduates for the real-world engineering context. In recent decades, attempts to address this issue include increasing project-based assignments and engineering design courses in curricula; however, a skills gap between education…

Background: To create design solutions experienced engineering designers engage in expert iterative practice. Researchers find that students struggle to learn this critical engineering design practice, particularly when tackling real-world engineering design problems. Purpose/Hypothesis: To improve our ability to teach iteration, this study…

Background: Research points to family talk and interactions involving STEM concepts as one of the most influential informal learning experiences that shape an individual's STEM identity development and encourage their pursuit of a STEM career. However, a recent literature review uncovers limited research regarding the development of engineering…

Background: Tinkering, an ad hoc approach to solving a problem, involves manipulating objects to characterize and build knowledge about a particular system in an exploratory way, often with the goal of getting some product/idea to produce desired behavior. Tinkering contrasts more deliberate activity toward understanding how a phenomenon works.…

Background: Human-centered design approaches promote and facilitate comprehensive understanding of stakeholders to inform design decisions. Successful engagement with stakeholders is critical to favorable design outcomes and requires skillful information gathering and synthesizing processes, which present unique challenges to student designers.…

Background: Humanitarian engineering (HE) is rapidly emerging in universities and professional workplaces worldwide. In HE, socio-technical thinking is fundamental as HE projects exist at the intersection of engineering and sustainable community development. However, the literature still lacks an understanding of the key features of…

Background: Prior researchers developed an instrument to measure perceived design thinking ability of first-year students interested in engineering, and they validated the instrument through exploratory factor analysis. Purpose/Hypothesis: Our study uses the previously developed instrument to evaluate perceived design thinking ability of senior…

Background: Across academic disciplines, researchers have found that argumentation-based pedagogies increase learners' achievement and engagement. Engineering educational researchers and teachers of engineering may benefit from knowledge regarding how argumentation related to engineering has been practiced and studied. Purpose/Hypothesis: Drawing…