Melissa Hirt
Albany Public Schools
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The goal of this paper is to popularize engineering design pedagogy in New York State technology education. In New York State, technology education has the potential to engage students in the liberal arts tenets of hands-on and minds-on activities that explore problem solving, engineering design, and topics that range from the history of technology to manufacturing. For instance, students may engage in hands-on activities around egg drop containers, which involves the engineering design staples of building and testing their products while also working through highly collaborative and creative design processes. Yet, an emphasis on engineering design has been an evolving theme in technology education. This paper will explore the historical change in New York State schools from industrial arts education to technology education, and how these changes allowed educators to engage engineering design as part of teaching and learning with technology in their classrooms.
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The paper will define what engineering design has looked like in the past as part of industrial arts education and what it looks like today as part of the hands-on and minds-on activities of technology education by asking the question: What is the meaning of engineering design in hands-on and minds-on technology classrooms? To begin, I will define what hands-on and minds-on activities look like in the context of engineering design. Next, I will draw on examples from my middle school technology classroom to describe some best practices for integrating engineering design into technology education. Finally, I will describe a number of institutional and cultural barriers for integrating engineering design into my hands-on and minds-on oriented technology classroom.