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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Supporting Mechanistic Reasoning In Domain-Specific Contexts, Paul J. Weinberg
Supporting Mechanistic Reasoning In Domain-Specific Contexts, Paul J. Weinberg
Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)
Mechanistic reasoning is an epistemic practice central within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. Although there has been some work on mechanistic reasoning in the research literature and standards documents, much of this work targets domain-general characterizations of mechanistic reasoning; this study provides domain-specific illustrations of mechanistic reasoning. The data in this study comes from the Assessment of Mechanistic Reasoning Project (AMRP) (Weinberg, 2012), designed using item response theory modeling to diagnose individuals’ mechanistic reasoning about systems of levers. Such a characterization of mechanistic reasoning illuminates what is easy and difficult about this form of reasoning, within the subdomain of …
Latinx And Caucasian Elementary School Children’S Knowledge Of And Interest In Engineering Activities, Gamze Ozogul, Cindy Faith Miller, Martin Reisslein
Latinx And Caucasian Elementary School Children’S Knowledge Of And Interest In Engineering Activities, Gamze Ozogul, Cindy Faith Miller, Martin Reisslein
Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)
Ethnic minorities, such as Latinx people of Hispanic or Latino origin, and women earn fewer engineering degrees than Caucasians and men. With shifting population dynamics and high demands for a technically qualified workforce, it is important to achieve broad participation in the engineering workforce by all ethnicities and both genders. Previous research has examined the knowledge of and interest in engineering among students in grades five and higher. In contrast, the present study examined elementary school students in grades K–5. The study found that older students in grades 4 and 5 had both greater knowledge of engineering occupational activities and …