2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As part of a larger project to transform the K-12 STEM curriculum scope and sequence, a Computer Science and Engineering (CS&E) Department was formed to support the growth of course offerings at a small-sized school for girls. At the Primary School level, the pre-transformed curriculum focused on block-based coding and robotics. Building on this strength, the underlying goal of the transformed program was to infuse engineering throughout the curriculum with a focus on cultivating students’ identities as engineers and their engineering habits of mind.

After a review of existing engineering curriculum options, the authors selected relevant modules from the Engineering is Elementary program. Modules were selected based on alignment with the Primary School CS&E, math, science, and literacy learning objectives and with the school’s mission to cultivate confident, intellectual, and ethical girls who advance the world. One particular unit that was used with the 2nd grade class was about chemical engineering.

In this unit, the students listened to a story entitled Michelle’s MVP Award. In this story Michelle, an artistic girl with Down Syndrome, uses play dough in a creative way to help her ice hockey team fund a trip. After reading the story, the second graders explored and tested various ways to fabricate play dough using just three ingredients: water, salt and flour. The students examined states of matter in the form of solids and liquids as they used chemical engineering skills to combine the play dough materials together. The students quickly realized that not only are the materials important, but the steps of the process used to combine the materials are often very important as well.

At the conclusion of the unit, students were asked to draw a chemical engineer. Students responded to the prompt: “What is a chemical engineer? Draw a picture of a chemical engineer at work. Label your picture.” If the paper is accepted, we will provide an analysis of the drawings using the modified Draw-An-Engineer Test theoretical framework (e.g. Carr & Diefes-Dux, 2012). Preliminary analysis indicates that a majority of the students drew female engineers with some drawing what appeared to be self-portraits. Students’ labels seem to reflect a robust definition of the engineering profession.

Reference
Carr, R. L., & Diefes-Dux, H. A. (2012, June). Change in elementary student conceptions of engineering following an intervention as seen from the Draw-an-Engineer Test. In 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition (pp. 25-299).