As the field evolves over time, shifting from Industrial Arts, to Technology Education, to Engineering and Technology Education (ETE), so too does what teachers teach, how they teach, and the projects that they use. Projects that worked 10 years ago might not hold up today and, as reflective practitioners, they need to be able to align the current…

Background: There is a well-known gender disparity in the engineering field. Three of the most important factors related to the participation of women in engineering are differences in perceived societal relevance, technical self-efficacy, and tinkering self-efficacy. Purpose/Hypothesis: Soft robotics is a relatively new engineering application…

In the field of technology and engineering education, educators are limited by their inability to predict what is coming; as the saying goes, they are preparing their students for jobs that do not even exist yet. Two adaptive approaches can help prepare students for this uncertainty: (1) teaching broad skills that can be applied in new situations;…

Modeling allows students to become more effective designers. High school technology and engineering students engage in engineering design challenges as part of traditional instructional practices. Model-eliciting activities (MEA) present students with opportunities to elicit mathematical thinking that facilitates modeling. Students (n = 266) from…

Teaching design in technology and engineering education is one of the key "Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy" (International Technology and Engineering Educators Association, 2021). Still, it can be challenging to provide a high-quality educational experience aligned with the standards required in introductory…

Engineering career interest, especially that of young women, declines as they approach high-school graduation. We used expectancy-value theory, which emphasizes expectations for success and subjective value of experiences as antecedent factors to choice, as a framework for investigating new 9th grade soft robot design lessons. Compared to…

In 2010, the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) founded the Sabah Al Ahmad Center for Giftedness and Creativity (SACGC). The Center supports Kuwait's Strategic Development Plan and the country's commitment to nurture gifted and talented youth. The Center also supports the work of talented adult inventors and entrepreneurs by…

Background: Because design is recognized as a critical element of engineering thinking, it is crucial for educators to utilize the most effective methods to teach engineering problem solving. Results from this study of students' thinking process may shape future teaching methods. Purpose: This article explores the differences in design processes…

Developing solutions to engineering design problems requires access to information. Research has shown that appropriately accessing and using information in the design process improves solution quality. This quasi-experimental study provides two groups of high school students with a design problem in a three hour design experience. One group has…

Teachers can find opportunities to incorporate design thinking and scientific inquiry within any lesson where a constraint of the design can be connected to a scientific experiment. Within a lesson, this connection establishes context between engineering and science and can positively impact students' learning and interest in these subjects. The…

The objective of this research was to explore design thinking among teams of high school students. This objective was encompassed in the research question driving the inquiry: How do teams of high school students allocate time across stages of design? Design thinking on the professional level typically occurs in a team environment. Many…

Mentzer and Becker (2011) and Becker and Mentzer (2012) demonstrated that high school students engaged in engineering design problems spent more time accessing information and spent more time designing when provided with Internet access. They studied high school students engaged in an engineering design challenge. The two studies attempted to…

The purpose of this study was to determine if high school students' academic preparation was correlated with change in motivation during an engineering design challenge. The research was conducted in a high school classroom in which elements of engineering design were taught in a technology education context to eleventh-grade student from diverse…

This study contextualized the use of the engineering design process by providing descriptions of how each element in a design process was integrated in an eleventh grade industry and engineering systems course. The guiding research question for this inquiry was: How do students engage in the engineering design process in a course where technology…

The purpose of this study was to determine if a student's academic success, measured by grade point average (GPA) in mathematics, science, and communication courses, is correlated with student change in achievement during an engineering design challenge. Engineering design challenges have been implemented and researched in K-16 environments where…