2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Promoting the teaching of graph interpretation from an early age is essential, not only to enable individuals to make informed decisions but also for fostering the development of knowledge in STEM disciplines. Graphs serve as a powerful tool for communicating information relevant to people’s surroundings, and their interpretation is essential for making decisions that impact daily life [1]. Moreover, graph interpretation is a critical component in the development of knowledge associated with STEM disciplines, including engineering and science practices [2]. However, graph interpretation is not a skill that develops automatically through mere exposure to graphs [3]. Therefore, and in alignment with the NGSS and the CCSS for Mathematics [4], it is essential to promote instruction in graph interpretation from the early years, including middle school students.
Expanding learning opportunities for middle school students in engineering practices requires incorporating graph interpretation tasks similar to those used by engineers. In engineering fields, interpreting graphs is essential for analyzing and understanding data that guide the construction and evaluation of engineering designs. Given this importance, Rodger et al. [5] emphasize that the use of interactive graphs in engineering education—tools that allow visualization and active engage with data—can create a more dynamic and engaging learning experience, thereby broadening students’ opportunities to learn. However, middle school instruction often focuses on linear functions and rarely includes representations comparable to those found in authentic STEM contexts [6]. Therefore, advancing the teaching of engineering to middle school students requires fostering instruction in the interpretation of interactive graphs comparable to those employed by engineers in practice.
This study aims to explore how a STEM learning experience contributes to fostering middle school–aged students’ development of the process of interpreting an interactive graph. Our work is grounded in the Integrated STEM through the Engineering Design Process approach, which argues that “the applications of design processes in solving an integrative STEM problem can assist students in developing new knowledge and capabilities” [7, p. 50], including those related to mathematical knowledge.
This WIP paper presents the advances of a qualitative case study [8] involving a group of middle school-aged students. For this study, an integrated learning experience was designed within the context of airplane flight. This experience includes the use of free-access simulator for airplane wing design, which incorporates an interactive graph. Audio recordings and images of participants’ work will be collected during their engagement in the learning experience. The data analysis will focus on identifying students’ graph interpretation processes through the lens of the graph sense framework: “Graph sense develops gradually as a result of one’s creating graphs and using already designed graphs in a variety of problem contexts that require making sense of data” [9, p. 145]. This study contributes to the field of mathematics in engineering education by expanding knowledge on how to foster graph sense through learning experiences based on the engineering design process.