Understanding and Eliciting Engineering Science Practice Exploring Beginner Embodiment Through Musical Instrument Design
Abstract
While learning scientists have advocated for students to engage with the practices of science and engineering in addition to learning the content, engineering science is still broadly viewed as the math and science content particularly relevant to engineering design. Mechanical engineering faculty members, both practitioners and teachers of engineering science, were interviewed about the activities they use in their research projects and their learning goals for foundational science courses they teach to undergraduate students. A design based research study then explores how students can begin to enact engineering science practice when asked to conduct an investigation as part of a musical instrument design provocation. Learning environments for middle school students and undergraduates were developed to enable them to think like engineering scientists while generating knowledge about how their instrument produces sound. Multiple, descriptive case studies from each age group are presented, and student engagement is analyzed. Using a grounded theory methodology, I propose a framework made up of three main features, each with sub-activities, for understanding engineering science practice. (1) To determine the scope of their investigations, engineering scientists (a) recognize relevant variables, (b) limit their investigation to be productive given constraints, and (c) interpret implications of results and their reliability. (2) To apply science or math concepts and practices, they (a) apply a mechanistic understanding of the phenomenon, (b) use a domain specific understanding of how to mathematize the problem, and (c) reason scientifically about results. (3) Making decisions based on an awareness of economy, they (a) guide the investigation based on material resources (e.g. computational tools) or theoretical tools (e.g. nondimensionalization), and (b) decide how to invest resources based on their present understanding and time constraints. A phenomenography of how middle school students, university students, and faculty members can embody these practices is presented, along with principles for designing learning environments to elicit student engagement with them. One key finding is that the knowledge products generated by students at the end of a focused investigation are rich, multi-dimensional formative assessment tools for teachers. Future research directions are proposed to investigate engineering science learning in alternative, constructionist inspired learning environments.
- Publication:
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Ph.D. Thesis
- Pub Date:
- 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019PhDT........40M
- Keywords:
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- Engineering;Science education;Acoustics