Rapid advancements in bioengineering call for broad public literacy to help individuals better understand the changes these technologies bring to our lives. However, making bioengineering concepts accessible and relevant, especially to non-science majors, is often challenging. To address this challenge, we designed a general education course aimed…

Given its ongoing struggles at attaining demographic diversity and its key role in nations' economies, the engineering workforce receives considerable attention from researchers and policymakers. Yet, prior studies and STEM recruitment initiatives have often underemphasized the variety among available engineering jobs and careers. It therefore…

Contribution: This article presents an engineering outreach activity that aims to teach K-12 students how to develop a tendon-based soft robotic finger. The primary objectives of this STEM activity are to introduce students to the fundamentals of soft robotics, its interdisciplinary nature, and to offer them a hands-on and engaging learning…

Current views on the teaching of differential equations (DEs) are shifting towards the use of graphical and numerical methods. Motivated by recent research suggesting that puzzle-based learning (PzBL) can improve the teaching and learning of STEM subjects and by the lack of relevant studies for DEs, we designed two tasks--sophism and paradox--to…

Background: Training both pre - and in-service teachers who are capable of planning and enacting engineering design-based science instruction are critical for integrating engineering into K-12 science curricula. Purpose: This study investigates pre-service teachers' efforts to integrate engineering into their lesson plans. Sample: 13 pre-service…

Action research is a form of research with the goal of improving standards of practice. In this thesis, action research was used to address practical issues within experimental methods for hypertension research and interventions for STEM education, including through defining the problem to be addressed, implementing a solution, assessing impacts,…

As part of a growing emphasis on "STEM," engineering has gained prominence in precollege education. In response to that trend, an emerging area of educational research focuses on the "Nature of Engineering" (NOE), a collection of ideas about what engineering is, what engineers do, and how engineering is related to science and…

The engineering education community in the United States has witnessed a tremendous increase in broadening participation initiatives as they wrestle with issues regarding inclusion. To date, these initiatives have targeted several goals, including access, belonging, and retention of students from underrepresented backgrounds. However, these…

The aims of this research were to examine the changes in the students' perceptions of engineers, engineering as a profession, learning of engineering design processes (EDP), awareness of engineering branches, and their future career choices through Engineering Design Process activities with the 5E learning model. Sixty disadvantaged students…

Course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) exposes an entire class of students to scientific research and is thought to increase students' knowledge retention in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Microbial engineering is an interdisciplinary subject that combines science and engineering. We transformed a…

There have been multiple uses of the term educational engineer. Some define an educational engineer as an educator who teaches engineering exclusively. Others define an educational engineer as a someone who works outside the classroom altogether, doing research and making decisions about curricula (Anderson, 1961; Charters, 1945; Rudinskiy et al.,…

The following study was conducted as a qualitative narrative study of four Mexican American secondary engineering teachers, including my own auto-ethnography as a Mexican American engineer and educator, working in school districts populated by primarily Mexican American students. The study stemmed from a general lack of attention in the literature…

This paper will discuss the concepts of Bildung, subalternity, and physics- and engineering education and where these topics intersect and interact with one another. A central part of the concept of Bildung is educating citizens--active participators in society. At the same time, a central characteristic of subaltern groups is that their voices…

As we prepare teachers to provide students with opportunities within STEM education, authentic experiences should guide the instruction. Unfortunately, due to the novel integration of engineering into national reform documents, there is a dearth of documentation on elementary preservice teachers' engineering ideas as they align with student goals…

Recently, integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has gained sustained attention in K-12 settings, and engineering design-based pedagogy has become a key issue. Compared with rich research in higher education, relatively few studies are performed on engineering education in K-12 schools. In this study, we…