Engineering practices and core concepts in schools: teaching the future engineers

Abstract

The framework of primary and secondary STEM education has given engineering education an unprecedented role until now. However, this centrality is not supported by a solid framework from a didactic point of view, resulting in superfluous and lacking proposals. This communication addresses three questions that point to the future of engineering teaching in school: What literacy in engineering should be promoted? What engineering practices should school develop among students? What are the central ideas that should be taught in schools? Taking as a reference the more consolidated and well-founded field of research on science education, we propose a list of engineering practices and a first approximation of engineering core ideas in order to bring an engineering epistemological perspective in school STEM education.

This research was carried out in the SGR STEAM University Learning Research Group (EduSTEAM) (2021-SGR-01412).

Postprint (published version)