Engineering in K-12 Education Understanding the Status and Improving the Prospects (2009) / Chapter Skim
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2 What Is Engineering?
2 What Is Engineering?
Pages 27-48
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From page 27... ...
Engineers also design processes, ranging from the manufacturing processes used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries to create chemicals and drugs to procedures for putting components together on an assembly line.
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From page 28... ...
Throughout this chapter, the reader should keep in mind that although engineers are crucial to shaping technology, they collaborate with professionals in many other fields, including scientists, craftspeople who build devices, business people who market and sell products, and a variety of technicians and technologists who are responsible for the operation, maintenance, and repair of devices. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ENGINEERING PROFESSION Engineers have been important in every stage of human history, because people have always designed and built tools and other devices.
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From page 29... ...
These specialized military architects were the first true engineers in the modern sense of the word. Over time military engineers expanded their purview to include other military work, such as designing siege engines, as well as civilian projects, such as designing and planning transportation systems.
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And so throughout much of the nineteenth century, engineers in the United States and elsewhere received their training in one of two very different ways -- either a formal, theoretically oriented way that emphasized mathematics, science, and engineering theory, or a practical, hands-on way that favored on-the-job training. The Rise of Professional Engineers After the Civil War, engineering programs in the United States increasingly emphasized formal training, although on-the-job training remained important for a variety of engineering disciplines -- particularly mechanical engineering -- until the middle of the twentieth century.
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From page 31... ...
Engineering, Industrial Arts, and Technology Education The advent of formal engineering education with its emphasis on theoretical mathematics and science was accompanied by a growing recognition that aspiring engineers also needed manual skills. As early as 1870, Calvin M
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In 1985 the Industrial Arts Association of America changed its name to the International Technology Education Association (ITEA) .2 Since the name change and, especially, since publication of Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology (2000)
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From page 33... ...
The varied implementation of technology education makes it difficult to clearly distinguish it from "engineering education" at the K–12 level. The distinctions are most apparent between the industrial arts model of technology education, with its emphasis on tool skills and fabrication of technological artifacts, and engineering education that focuses on the engineering design process as an approach to problem solving.
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From page 34... ...
They may be involved in making incremental design changes, building and testing products and processes, managing the installation of complex equipment, and developing maintenance procedures. Engineering technicians are primarily operators of technology, but they also have installation and maintenance skills beyond the capabilities of skilled tradesmen.
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engineering faculties, 2005: 0.2 percent Proportion employed as engineers, 2003: 0.3 percent SOURCES: NSF, 2005a,b, 2006a,b; U.S. Census Bureau, 2002, 2005; U.S.
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From page 36... ...
Engineers, working with doctors and medical researchers, can improve human health by developing better ways of storing, analyzing, and communicating health information and by designing more effective drugs. To avoid the misuse of powerful technologies, engineers will find ways to keep terrorists from obtaining and using nuclear materials and technologies and to secure cyberspace.
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From page 37... ...
Perhaps the most important for engineering is design, the basic engineering approach to solving problems. Using the design process, engineers can integrate various skills and types of thinking -- analytical and synthetic thinking; detailed understanding and holistic understanding; planning and building; and implicit, procedural knowledge and explicit, declarative knowledge.
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From page 38... ...
When electronic engineers design an integrated circuit chip, when transportation engineers design a subway system, when chemical engineers design a chemical processing plant, and when biomedical engineers design an artificial organ, they all use variants of the same basic problem-solving strategy -- engineering design. According to Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology (ITEA, 2000)
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From page 39... ...
In searching for solutions, engineers and scientists use similar cognitive tools, such as brainstorming, reasoning by analogy, mental models, and visual representations. And both require testing and evaluation of the product -- the engineering design or the scientific hypothesis.
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. Science BOX 2-2 Characteristics of Scientific Inquiry and Engineering Design Scientific Inquiry: Demands evidence Is a blend of logic and imagination Explains and predicts Tries to identify and avoid bias Is not authoritarian Engineering (or Technological)
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The distinguishing features of engineering design include taking into account specifications and constraints; dependence on iteration; and the embrace of multiple possible solutions. The differences in the two lists reflect the basic differences between science and engineering -- scientists investigate and engineers create.
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From page 42... ...
This process of predictive analysis is another central feature of engineering design. Very sophisticated software programs have been developed for predicting the performance of integrated circuit chips, for example.
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From page 43... ...
Chemical engineers must understand chemistry, bioengineers must understand molecular biology, petroleum engineers must understand geology, electronics engineers must understand how electrons behave in various materials, nuclear engineers must understand how the nuclei of atoms behave, and so on. Indeed, science is so fundamental to what engineers do that, in a very real sense, engineering can be thought of as putting science to work.
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From page 44... ...
An Increasingly Diverse Workforce As shown in Table 2-1, the engineering workforce in the United States today includes relatively few women and minorities compared to the percentages of these groups in the general population and the overall workforce. These numbers indicate that the potential contributions of women and minorities to the engineering workforce are not being realized.
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From page 45... ...
Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies, Inc. Washington, D.C.: ASEE.
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From page 46... ...
Home wood, Ill.: American Technical Publishers, Inc. ITEA (International Technology Education Association)
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From page 47... ...
Paper presented at the International Technology Education Association Conference, Session IV: Technology Education and Engineer ing, Kansas City, Missouri, April 4, 2005. Miller, J
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From page 48... ...
Population Profile of the United States: Dynamic Version. Available online at http://www.census.gov/population/ pop-profile/dynamic/RACEHO.pdf (accessed October 26, 2007)
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