The engineering design process – learning in primary and secondary school technology classrooms

Summary

This review is a compilation of studies that analyse teaching and learning about the engineering design process. Its purpose is to provide additional knowledge about what elements of teaching can create opportunities for student learning, thereby contributing to conditions conducive to research-based teaching about this subject. The review includes Swedish and international studies from the equivalent to Swedish preschool class, primary and secondary school and intends to answer the following research question:

How can teachers design technology education to create opportunities for students to learn about the engineering design process?

The engineering design process is a vital element of technology as a subject. According to Sweden’s Lgr22 curriculum, where it is referred to as the technology development process, it includes the ‘identification of needs, investigation, proposal of solutions, design and testing’. In other words, the process includes a range of elements, such as systematic thinking, exploration, idea generation and decision-making. Additionally, teaching needs to be able to include the entire process, with an iterative process of testing and retesting technical solutions.

Results of the review

The review is based upon 43 studies with results about both the process in its entirety and its individual parts. Results from the studies which examined the process include the degree to which students work on different parts of the process and whether they work iteratively. Other studies focus on more specific aspects, such as modelling or working with sketches. A relatively large number of studies focus on communication and interaction, with only a few studies using a comparative approach to examine the effects of specific practices. The majority of studies use observations of teaching situations or interviews as their empirical basis. The results of the studies are presented in three main themes:

• Overall understanding and iterative approaches.
• Framing and designing the task.
• Communication and interaction during group work.

Overall understanding and iterative approaches

A common thread in the studies is the importance of allowing students to work in a systematic and iterative manner. Observations of teaching situations show that students give some parts of the process more space than others. For example, they may want to rush through the elements that involve doing investigations, analysing different solutions and planning, so they can start building a prototype straight away. Similarly, students can get stuck on idea generation and have difficulty making decisions. A further challenge is that learners may engage in trial and error rather than working systematically with the different elements of the process.

The studies show that teachers can support students in different ways, creating opportunities for them to work systematically and iteratively with the entire process. One way is to explicitly work with failure and the perception of failure. The inclusion of teaching about how failure is a necessary part of the engineering design process can help students develop a more positive view of rethinking and making improvements as they work.

Using written documentation, such as logbooks, in teaching is one way of supporting students throughout the process. A logbook allows students to sort information and reflect on the process. It may also serve as a visual reference that helps students to discuss and reflect together, and can also provide a foundation that allows the teacher to follow the students’ processes.

Teacher feedback and verbal support is key to supporting students when they get stuck on specific parts of the process. This support can be provided in the form of questions and clues, so the teacher can get the student to reflect and come up with ideas on how to move forward in the process. Teachers can use clues to support students in finding what they can focus on to progress.

Framing and designing the task

This theme describes how teachers can work on framing and designing the task to create opportunities for students to learn about all or parts of the engineering design process. The studies’ results illuminate how different levels of openness in the tasks can lead to different student approaches. By having an open approach, teachers can focus on investigating and formulating the problem, for example. A more closed task may instead direct learning towards the more detailed testing of a particular solution. One way to make the task more open-ended is to frame it through a fictional story, in which students need to solve a problem in the story itself.

Learning about the engineering design process can start from an authentic task or from the students’ approach being similar to that of professional developers. However, the results of the studies describe how, in itself, the school context constrains authentic ways of working, for example due to timeframes, social relationships in the classroom and a striving to fulfil the teacher’s expectations. Authentic tasks can make it challenging for students to work on both the technical and social aspects of the problem they are solving. Teachers can support students as they switch between different perspectives; they may also need to help students use relevant concepts in their engineering design projects and to help them draw on prior knowledge from other school subjects.

Working with sketches, drawings and models is an essential part of student learning about the engineering design process. These are important for various parts of the process and also provide a basis for reflection and discussion. Teachers may need to improve students’ drawing skills, for example, so they can be fully utilised it in the project.

Communication and interaction during group work

In the studies, the most common teaching arrangement is that students work in groups, with some researchers investigating cooperation between students and how they communicate. The studies highlight the benefits of group work, particularly how students can discuss and reflect together in a manner that, to some extent, resembles professional engineering design. They also recognise that there are difficulties, such as the subjects of discussions and decision-making not always focusing on was intended. For example, students may find it difficult to evaluate and compare different options because they take each other into consideration – social status in the group may determine the proposals the group chooses to move forward with. There is also the risk of misunderstandings, because students may find it difficult to use technical terms and to be specific in their discussions.

Applying the results

The review is primarily aimed at technology teachers, but may also be valuable for teachers who work with similar student tasks in other subjects. Similarly, it may also be useful for student teachers and school management.

The hope is that teachers will be able to use the review in their professional practice, as it not only provides an overall picture of the included studies’ results, but also contains concrete examples from the teaching situations they describe. The review can be used as a basis for discussion with other teachers and can also be read separately. You can also visit skolforskningsportalen.se for discussion questions which can be used for work that builds upon the review’s results.

Selection of research

The review is a compilation of results from 43 studies that were selected after extensive searches of international and national research databases. The majority of studies are from the United States, but there are also studies from Sweden, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands, among others. The studies cover teaching and learning about the engineering design process as a whole, or a specific part of it. Most of the studies examine teaching at primary and lower secondary levels.

The systematic review is available as summary, information sheet and full report (in Swedish)

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