Examining the Literacy Practices of Engineers to Develop a Model of Disciplinary Literacy Instruction for K-12 Engineering (Work in Progress)

Despite efforts to diversify the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce, engineering remains a White, male-dominated profession. Often, women and underrepresented students do not identify with STEM careers and many opt out of STEM pathways prior to entering high school or college. In order to broaden participation in engineering, new methods of engaging and retaining those who are traditionally underrepresented in engineering are needed. This work is based on a promising approach for encouraging and supporting diverse participation in engineering: disciplinary literacy instruction (DLI). Generally, teachers use DLI to provide K-12 students with a framework for interpreting, evaluating, and generating discipline-specific texts. This instruction provides students with an understanding of how experts in the discipline read, engage, and generate texts used to solve problems or communicate information. While models of disciplinary literacy have been developed and disseminated in several humanities and science fields, there is a lack of empirical and theoretical research that examines the use of DLI within the engineering domain. It is thought that DLI can be used to foster diverse student interest in engineering from a young age by removing literacy-based barriers that often discourage underrepresented students from entering and pursuing careers in STEM fields. This work-in-progress paper describes a new study underway to develop and disseminate a model of disciplinary literacy in engineering. During this project, researchers will observe, interview, and collect written artifacts from engineers working across four sub-disciplines of engineering: aerospace/mechanical, biological, civil/environmental, and electrical/computer. Data that will be collected include interview transcripts, observation field notes, engineer logs of literacy practices, and photographs of texts that the engineers read and write. Data will be analyzed using constant comparative analytic (CCA) methods. CCA will be used to generate theoretical codes from the data that will form the basis for a model of disciplinary literacy in engineering. As a primary outcome of this research, the engineering DLI model will promote the use of DLI practices within K-12 engineering instruction in order to assist and encourage diverse, underrepresented students to engage in engineering courses of study and pursue STEM careers. Thus far, the research team has begun collecting and analyzing data from two electrical engineers. This work in progress paper will report on preliminary findings, as well as implications for K-12 classroom instruction. For instance, this study has shed insights on how engineers use texts as part of the process of conducting failure analysis, and the research team has begun to conceptualize how these types of texts might be used with K-12 students to help them conduct failure analyses during design testing. Ultimately, this project will result in a list of grade-appropriate texts, evaluative frameworks, and activities (e.g., failure analysis in testing) that K-12 engineering teachers can use to prepare their diverse students to think, act, read, and write like engineers

Task Affect and Task Understanding in Engineering Problem Solving

Within the self-regulated learning literature, motivation is considered to be an essential feature of students’ self-regulatory processes. Additionally, task affect (i.e., personal objectives and task value) is thought to influence students’ self-regulatory processes; insufficient task affect may lead to failures to self-regulate effectively. In a school setting, task affect is a form of motivation for completing the course tasks in order to attain course-level goals that are inherently valued. In this study, motivation is operationalized as students’ personal objectives and task values, and self-regulation refers to students’ understanding of tasks (also called task interpretation skill) involved in a course. This study investigates changes in students’ task interpretation skill, personal objectives for learning, and task values, if any, while engaged in engineering problem-solving activities in a 2nd-year introductory thermodynamics course. This study also seeks to explore whether patterns exist between students’ task understanding, personal objectives for learning, and task value while engaged in problem-solving activities throughout the course. The findings suggest that, as the semester progressed, both students’ task value for the course and their focus on mastering the course material were continuously developed. Similarly, students’ explicit and implicit task interpretation skills also improved as they engaged in problem-solving activities. However, it was found that implicit task interpretation skill was not developed as fully as explicit task interpretation when solving a complex problem; students seemed to understand 64–77% of the explicit and 39–49% of the implicit information presented to them

Perspectives of Pedagogical Change within a Broadcast STEM Course

As calls for pedagogical transformation of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction intensify, the pace of change remains slow. The literature shows that research-based instructional strategies transfer only sporadically into STEM instructional practice. Difficulties associated with implementation and sustainment of instructional change may appear daunting— if not insurmountable—to many STEM change agents and teaching faculty. Subsequently, the path towards systematic and lasting pedagogical transformation in post-secondary STEM stands largely uncharted. To understand how challenges faced by STEM educators engaged in pedagogical change may be overcome, this paper uses qualitative inquiry to explore an emergent process of teacher change. The change process took place during implementation of an online innovation within an undergraduate engineering calculus course taught via synchronous broadcast at a mid-size, Western, public university. The instructional innovation required first year calculus students to participate in an asynchronous, online discussion forum for graded credit. Data, consisting of written reflections and transcribed interviews, were gathered from three STEM faculty members who each played a different role in the change process: a mathematics instructor implementing the online forum within his course; an engineering faculty peer-mentor assisting with the implementation of the online forum; and a STEM education faculty member evaluating the implementation and observing the process of change. Situated within the interpretive research paradigm, this study uses exploratory thematic analysis of narrative data to understand the ways in which contextual factors may influence pedagogical change

Learning from Engineers to Develop a Model of Disciplinary Literacy in Engineering (Year 3)

Purpose This paper will the describe the overall project goals, activities, preliminary findings, and future work on this project. The purpose of this project is to develop a model of Disciplinary Literacy Instruction (DLI) in engineering that can be used in both K-12 and undergraduate engineering settings. This model of DLI will be informed by knowledge about the ways practicing engineers across four disciplines of engineering (i.e., electrical/computer, mechanical/aerospace, civil/environmental, and chemical/biological) read, interpret, evaluate, and generate texts in the context of their work environment. This information will be translated into a model of DLI in engineering to teach students how to use authentic engineering literacy practices as they learn discipline specific engineering content. Project Activities During the first year of this project, we conducted on-site observations with two electrical engineers and two mechanical engineers. In addition, we held interviews and conducted think-aloud protocols that were informed by the observations with each engineer. From these data sources, we developed a codebook describing the types of texts that the engineers interpreted, evaluated, and generated at the workplace. worked with both mechanical and electrical engineering consultants to help refine and revise the codes and code definitions to enhance their authenticity to each discipline. To further ensure the quality of our data analysis procedures, we sought feedback on our codes from three advisory board consultants having expertise in disciplinary literacy, engineering, and K-12 engineering education. During the second year of this project, we analyzed the interview and think-aloud protocol transcripts from the electrical and mechanical engineers to generate themes that described the interpretive and evaluative frameworks the engineers used as they solved a technical problem or generated a solution for a client or customer. Similarly, we developed themes that described the socially situated activities in which the previously defined genres were embedded. Taken together, these frameworks and activities inform the development of the DLI model in engineering. We also began collecting observation, interview, and think aloud data with one civil and one environmental engineer during this year. Currently, in the third year of this project, we are analyzing the observation field notes and the interview and think-aloud protocol transcripts from the civil and environmental engineers. Simultaneously, we are generating data with the final pair of engineers: one biological and one chemical engineer. We continue to refine our codebook by adding new genres as they appear and merging any similar, existing genres to capture the range of texts with which the engineers engaged. Engineering consultants from both the civil and environmental disciplines will provide feedback on our codes. Combined data from this phase with previous phases will be used develop disciplinary specific curricular materials for K-12 and undergraduate engineering education. Future Activities The data collected and analyzed throughout the project will inform the development of a model for DLI in engineering that can be used by teachers in both undergraduate and K-12 educational settings. This model will provide a framework for teachers to instruct students on how to use the authentic reading and writing strategies that practicing engineers use while solving problems. By providing a diverse set of students with exposure to these literacy practices in school at a young age, a model of DLI in engineering has the potential to remove literacy-based barriers that may deter students from pursuing engineering pathways

Perceptions Of School By Two Teenage Boys With Asperger Syndrome And Their Mothers: A Qualitative Study

This qualitative study aimed to develop an understanding of the challenges faced by teenage boys with Asperger syndrome and their mothers. A case study approach was used to collect data from two 13-year-old boys who have Asperger syndrome and their mothers in Queensland, Australia. Data were collected through the use of semi¬structured interviews. The words of the boys and their mothers provide a valuable insight into the personal experiences and feelings of the par¬ticipants. An inductive approach to data analysis identified four themes: (1) developmental differences; (2) problems associated with the general characteristics of Asperger syndrome (i.e. communication and social difficulties, restricted range of interests, a need for routine); (3) stress; and (4) 'masquerading'. The first three themes relate strongly to the current literature, but the emergence of masquerading is of particular interest in developing a fuller understanding of the experiences of individuals with Asperger syndrome at school

BDNF-TrkB signaling in striatopallidal neurons controls inhibition of locomotor behaviour

The physiology of brain-derived neurotrophic factor signaling in enkephalinergic striatopallidal neurons is poorly understood. Changes in cortical Bdnf expression levels, and/or impairment in brain-derived neurotrophic factor anterograde transport induced by mutant huntingtin (mHdh) are believed to cause striatopallidal neuron vulnerability in early-stage Huntington’s disease. Although several studies have confirmed a link between altered cortical brain-derived neurotrophic factor signaling and striatal vulnerability, it is not known whether the effects are mediated via the brain-derived neurotrophic factor receptor TrkB, and whether they are direct or indirect. Using a novel genetic mouse model, here, we show that selective removal of brain-derived neurotrophic factor–TrkB signaling from enkephalinergic striatal targets unexpectedly leads to spontaneous and drug-induced hyperlocomotion. This is associated with dopamine D2 receptor-dependent increased striatal protein kinase C and MAP kinase activation, resulting in altered intrinsic activation of striatal enkephalinergic neurons. Therefore, brain-derived neurotrophic factor/TrkB signaling in striatopallidal neurons controls inhibition of locomotor behavior by modulating neuronal activity in response to excitatory input through the protein kinase C/MAP kinase pathway

Analisi della risposta sismica di un edificio campione nel Comune di Ariano Irpino (AV)

Nella pratica ingegneristica vengono usate correlazioni derivate da regressioni statistiche tra numero dei piani degli edifici e frequenze di risonanza. Tuttavia la discrepanza tra comportamento reale e valori aspettati può essere talvolta significativa, e solo l’acquisizione di dati sperimentali consente di comprendere il reale comportamento dinamico di una struttura. La sperimentazione, in situazioni anche complesse, e la raccolta di nuovi dati possono essere molto importanti nel campo dell’ingegneria strutturale. In questo articolo vengono presentati i risultati del monitoraggio sismico effettuato su un edificio campione in muratura (il municipio di Ariano Irpino), tipologia costruttiva largamente diffusa tra gli edifici pubblici strategici (ad esempio scuole, caserme ed ospedali). Sono state utilizzate 7 stazioni sismologiche a sei canali equipaggiate con sismometri ed accelerometri. I dati sismici sono stati acquisiti in modalità continua, in punti strategici della struttura, su diversi livelli, dal gennaio 2006 a dicembre 2007. Sono stati selezionati una ventina di terremoti di magnitudo bassa o intermedia (1.5 ≤ M ≤ 4.8) avvenuti a distanze epicentrali variabili da 4 a 116 km. Le registrazioni sono state analizzate sia mediante la tecnica dei rapporti spettrali rispetto alla base dell’edificio sia calcolando i rapporti spettrali tra componente orizzontale e verticale di ogni sensore. L’analisi svolta ha consentito di evidenziare numerose frequenze di vibrazione dell’edificio. Mediante simulazioni numeriche su un modello tridimensionale rappresentativo della struttura in esame è stato possibile associare i picchi in frequenza ai modi propri in campo lineare. In particolare, sono stati ben identificati i primi 3 modi di vibrazione (due flessionali ed uno rotazionale)