A research agenda for design-based learning in engineering education

It is often argued that ‘design’ is an (perhaps the) essential characteristic of engineering practice; that, “Design requires unique knowledge, skills, and attitudes common to all engineering disciplines, and it is these attributes that distinguish engineering as a profession.” Hence, it is not surprising to see engineering design identified as a key element of engineering education. There are a range of pedagogical models described, badged with a range of names, that are suggested as approaches to teaching engineering design, for example: project-based learning, problem-based learning, design-based learning, conceive-design-implement-operate (CDIO), problem-oriented project-based learning, social design based learning and project-oriented, design-based learning. While significant literature on engineering design education generally exists, many authors note open questions regarding optimal pedagogical approaches, and opportunities for further evaluation and research. In this paper we draw on literature about design education and DBL in engineering education, and synthesise themes that present a potential research agenda for those educators involved in DBL in engineering education.A search of the research literature was conducted using terms related to DBL in engineering education, including ‘Engineering Design’, ‘Design Education’, ‘Engineering + Project Based Learning’, ‘Engineering + Problem Based Learning’ and ‘Engineering + Design Based Learning’. The literature thus collected was expanded by inspecting the lists of references in the initially identified literature set for further potentially relevant literature. This process was repeated until no further related literature was identified, and resulted in 124 items. All collected literature was carefully reviewed for explicitly identified suggestions for future research. The authors also considered the literature set as a whole to identify additional research possibilities implied by aspects of DBL practice commonly addressed weakly, or not at all, in the available published research. From the results of this review, a set of themes was synthesised by grouping related research recommendations and possibilities. In the following section the identified research themes are presented and, for each, a summary of the supporting literature is given and a central research question is formulated by the authors.

FASD: From isolation to inclusion in Australian schools.

This research investigated pedagogical approaches required for the successful inclusion of children and young people living with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. The research applied an Indigenist constructivist qualitative method working with one school community. The development of a National Framework for Achieving Inclusion for Australian Students with FASD demands urgent policy and support for educators to meet the complex learning needs of students with FASD.

More than substitution: an ongoing journey of the 1:1 iPad program

The drive for the incorporation of digital technologies in the primary mathematics classroom is becoming more prevalent in our schools and curriculum documents. It is vital these technologies enrich the learning experience to make this integration worthwhile, and not simply be employed as a substitution for already satisfactory pedagogical approaches. The SAMR Model (Puentedura, 2006) incorporates four levels of technology integration in the classroom, from the simplicity of “Substitution” through to the transformative level of “Redefinition” (p. 7). In this paper, teachers from Ringwood North Primary School share how the SAMR Model impacted their teaching practice to support, enhance, and personalise student learning in mathematics through the 1:1 iPad Program. Tasks created with user-friendly and easily accessible digital resources such as Padlet, Kahoot! and Explain Everything are shared. Educators should consider the application and suitability of these digital technologies in conjunction with an appropriate level of integration prior to employment as a tool for enhancing mathematical understanding.

Renegotiating the pedagogical peace : a case study in online discussions for undergraduate on campus students

This paper reports an investigation into the ways in which undergraduate students, who are studying on campus, learn in online discussions. The study focuses on student strategies, and the role of text, time and place independence, peer interaction and the influence of the curriculum. It also examines the relationships between online discussions and face to face classes. The study found deep approaches to learning were widely used and were associated with constructivist learning activity, thinking and interacting online in groups in a way that adds value to the classroom, close integration with face to face activity and a positive perception of online discussions and the course as a whole. This case study confirms the relational nature of student learning in a blended learning environment.

Students` pedagogical preferences in the delivery of IT capstone courses

Capstone courses are used extensively in teaching information technology to expose students to realistic, work-like situations, though in a controlled environment. The value of the experiences the student engages in, and the skills and knowledge they develop are not questioned, as they are accepted as a beneficial precursor to professional work. The pedagogical methods used to deliver capstone courses vary across academic programme, institution, country and culture. The research explores information technology students’ preferences for the delivery of capstone projects from three different pedagogical delivery approaches and suggests that students want a certain level of anonymity, but at the same time they want direction and assistance when they determine they require it. Emerging from the findings are several recommendations that developers of capstone
 projects and courses may wish to address.

Pedagogy of the flesh : artaud and pedagogical fault lines

In the form of an installation, this panel will question the problems of combining the fleshiness of our bodies and the technologies of (re-)presentation in the production of knowledge that is contemporary teaching in a material environment. Do the aesthetics and methods of the performing arts open up new, dynamic approaches towards teaching practices? Conversely, how do traditional approaches to classroom management and learning undermine the performativity of our disciplinary concerns? We wish to challenge in the strongest possible terms the appropriateness of the traditional format for academic conferences with their monologic presentation of research outcomes. We crave new and unimagined formats for conferences that rely upon the very theatrical devices that we study, master, enact, and live through. This installation will express each participant's response to these provocations and will provide an interactive environment with many dialogic elements. Participants will use video images, live performers, and other theatrical devices to create an installation that deconstructs the experience of teaching. Signalling though the flames, should our teaching be any less?

The installation will be available for perusal as five simultaneous events occur in over-lapping space. This will last approximately 45 minutes and will be followed by a round-table discussion for the remainder of our time.

Community school teacher education and the construction of pedagogical discourse in Papua New Guinea

Pedagogical discourse in Papua New Guinea (PNG) community schooling is mediated by a western styles education. The daily administration and organisation of school activity, graded teaching and learning, subject selection, content boundaries, teaching and assessment methods are all patterned after western schooling. This educational settlement is part of a legacy of German, British and Australian government and non-government colonialism that officially came to an end in 1975. Given the colonial heritage of schooling in PNG, this study is interested in exploring particular aspects of the degree of mutuality between local discourses and the discourses of a western styled pedagogy in post-colonial times, for the purpose of better informing community school teacher education practices. This research takes place at and in the vicinity of Madang Teachers College, a pre-service community school teachers college on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. The research was carried out in the context of the researcher’s employment as a contract lecturer in the English language Department between 1991-1993. As an in-situ study it was influenced by the roles of different participants and the circumstances in which data was gathered and constituted, data which was compatible with participants commitments to community school teacher education and community school teaching and learning. In the exploration of specific pedagogic practices different qualitative research approaches and perspectives were brought to bear in ways best suited to the circumstances of the practice. In this way analytical foci were more dictated by circumstances rather by design. The analytical approach is both a hermeneutic one where participants’ activities are ‘read like texts’, where what is said or written is interpreted against the background of other informing contexts and texts, to better understand how understandings and meanings are produced and circulated; and also a phenomenological one where participants’ perspectives are sought to better understand how pedagogical discursive formations are assimilated with the ‘self’. The effect of shifting between these approaches throughout the study is to build up a sense of co-authorship between researcher and participants in relation to particular aspects of the research. The research explores particular sites where pedagogic discourse is produced, re-produced, distributed, articulated, consumed and contested, and in doing so seeks to better understand what counts as pedagogical discourse. These are sites that are largely unexplored in these terms, in the academic literature on teacher education and community schooling in PNG. As such, they represent gaps in what is documented and understood about the nature of post-colonial pedagogy and teacher training. The first site is a grade two community school class involved in the teaching and early learning of English as the ‘official’ language of instruction. Here local discourses of solidarity and agreement are seen to be mobilised to make meaningful, what are for the teacher and children moments in their construction as post-colonial subjects. What in instructional terms may be seen as an English language lesson becomes, in the light of the research perspectives used, an exercise in the structuring of new social identities, relations and knowings, problematising autonomous views of teaching and learning. The second site explores this issue of autonomous (decontextualised) teaching and learning through an investigation of student teachers’ epistemological contextualisations of knowledge, teaching and learning. What is examined is the way such orientations are constructed in terms of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ epistemological and pedagogical alignments, and, in terms of differently conceived notions of community, in a problematisation of the notion of community schooling. The third and fourth sites examine reflective accounts of student teachers’ pedagogic practices, understandings and subjectivities as they confront the moral and political economies and cultural politics of schooling in School Experiences and Practicum contexts, and show how dominant behaviourist and ‘rational/autonomous’ conceptions of what counts as teaching and learning are problematised in the way some students teachers draw upon wider social discourses to construct a dialogue with learners. The final site is a return to the community school where the discourse of school reports through which teachers, children and parents are constructed as particular subjects of schooling, are explored. Here teachers report children’s progress over a four year period and parents write back in conforming, confronting and contesting ways, in the midst of the ongoing enculturation of their children. In this milieu, schooling is shown to be a provider of differentiated social qualifications rather than a socially just and relevant education. Each of the above-mentioned studies form part of a research and pedagogic interest in understanding the ‘disciplining’ effects of schooling upon teacher education, the particular consequences of those effects, what is embraces, resisted and hidden. Each of the above sites is informed by various ‘intertexts’. The use of intertexts is designed to provide a multiplicity of views, actions and voices while enhancing the process of cross-cultural reading through contextualising the studies in ways that reveal knowledges and practices which are often excluded in more conventional accounts of teaching and learning. This research represents a journey, but not an aimless one. It is one which reads the ideological messages of coherence, impartiality and moral soundness of western pedagogical discourse against the school experiences of student-teachers, teachers, children and parents, in post-colonial Papua New Guinea, and finds them lacking.

Teacher change in exploring representational approaches to learning science

The researcher worked closely with two biology-trained teachers to plan three teaching sequences in the topics of forces, substances and astronomy that were subsequently taught to Year 7 students. The sequences sought to develop a model of classroom practice that foregrounds students’ negotiation of conceptual representations.

The difficulties encountered by individuals in learning science point to the need for a very strong emphasis of the role of representations in learning. There is a need for learners to use their own representational, cultural and cognitive resources to engage with the subject-specific representational practices of science. Researchers who have undertaken classroom studies whereby students have constructed and used their own representations have pointed to several principles in the planning, execution and assessment of student learning (diSessa, 2004; Greeno & Hall, 1997). A key principle is that teachers need to identify big ideas, key concepts, of the topic at the planning stage in order to guide refinement of representational work. These researchers also point out the need for students to engage with multiple representations in different modes that are both teacher and student generated. A representation can only partially explain a particular phenomenon or process and has both positive and negative attributes to the target that it represents. The issue of the partial nature of representations needs to be a component of classroom practice (Greeno & Hall, 1997) in terms of students critiquing representations for their limitations and affordances and explicitly linking multiple representations to construct a fuller understanding of the phenomenon or process under study. The classroom practice should also provide opportunities for students to manipulate representations as reasoning tools (Cox, 1999) in constructing the scientifically acceptable ideas and communicating them.

Research question: What impact was there on the participating teacher’s practice through the adoption of a representational focus to teaching science?

Data collection included video sequences of classroom practice and student responses, student work, field notes, tape records of meetings and discussions, and student and teacher interviews based in some cases on video stimulated recall. Video analysis software was used to capture the variety of representations used, and sequences of representational negotiation.

The teachers in this study reported substantial shifts in their classroom practices, and in the quality of classroom discussions, arising from adopting a representational focus. The shifts were reported by them as a three-fold challenge. First, there was an epistemological challenge as they came to terms with the culturally produced nature of representations in the topics of force, substance and astronomy and their flexibility and power as tools for analysis and communication, as opposed to their previous assumption that this was given knowledge to be learnt as an end point. The second challenge was pedagogical, in that this approach was acknowledged to place much greater agency in the hands of students, and this brought a need to learn to run longer and more structured discussions around conceptual problems. The third challenge related to content coverage. The teachers sacrificed coverage for the greater depth offered by this approach, and were unanimous in their judgment that this had been a change that had paid dividends in terms of student learning.

Empowering teachers through a professional learning program that focused on a representation intensive pedagogical approach

A representation-intensive pedagogical approach challenges students to generate and negotiate the representations (text, graphs, models, diagrams) that constitute the discursive practices of science, rather than focusing on the text-based, definitional versions of concepts. It thus represents a more active view of knowledge than traditional structural approaches. Previous research conducted on a small scale with a few topics and teachers, successfully demonstrated enhanced outcomes for students, in terms of sustained engagement with ideas, and quality learning, and for teachers enhanced pedagogical knowledge, and epistemological understanding. This paper explores the efficacy of embedding a representations-intensive pedagogical approach into a state-wide professional learning program that was delivered to secondary science teachers in Victoria, Australian, in 2010/2011. The professional learning program involved participating teachers undertaking two successive days of professional development, then completing a small classroom-based project in their schools before returning for the third day of professional development. The program was supported by on online drupal website. In determining the impact of the professional learning program on the teachers’ practice data was collected in the form of program participant surveys, presentations of the teachers’ classroom-based projects, focus group interviews and phone interviews.

Testing the effectiveness of mathematical games as a pedagogical tool for children's learning

In an effort to engage children in mathematics learning, many primary teachers use mathematical games and activities. Games have been employed for drill and practice, warm-up activities and rewards. The effectiveness of games as a pedagogical tool requires further examination if games are to be employed for the teaching of mathematical concepts. This paper reports research that compared the effectiveness of non-digital games with non-game but engaging activities as pedagogical tools for promoting mathematical learning. In the classrooms that played games, the effects of adding teacher-led whole class discussion was explored. The research was conducted with 10–12-year-old children in eight classrooms in three Australian primary schools, using differing instructional approaches to teach multiplication and division of decimals. A quasi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test was employed, and the effects of the interventions were measured by the children’s written test performance. Test results indicated lesser gains in learning in game playing situations versus non-game activities and that teacher-led discussions during and following the game playing did not improve children’s learning. The finding that these games did not help children demonstrate a mathematical understanding of concepts under test conditions suggests that educators should carefully consider the application and appropriateness of games before employing them as a vehicle for introducing mathematical concepts.

Pedagogical practices of female physical educators in an all-boys’ school

 This study explores the ways in which two female teachers in an all-boys' school negotiate their approaches to physical education pedagogy. Findings reveal that dominant gendered constructions underpin much of the school’s culture and as such, are heavily implicated in notions of effective PE pedagogy and practice in this school.

Intercultural engagement through pedagogical practices

Previously, in Victoria, Intercultural Understanding was embedded in the context area of ‘Languages Other than English' and taught by LOTE specialist teachers. Positioned in the new National Curriculum as a ‘General Capability' it will become the shared responsibility of all Australian teachers and so directly impact on them and their pedagogical practices. This prioritizing of Intercultural Understanding acknowledges the role of pedagogical practice in developing national and international social cohesion as well as meeting national economic imperatives (MCEETYA 2008, Banks 2011). The diverse social context of schooling is one in which many students experience negative intercultural experiences (Mansouri et al 2010) and yet it is also a site rich with potential for positive intercultural experiences and development of cosmopolitan dispositions (Noble, 2013 Rizvi 2009; Lo Bianco 2006); particularly ‘vernacular' cosmopolitanism (Robbins, 1998; Turner 2010). Drawing on case studies from two primary schools participating in an ARC-funded national research project, this presentation considers the impact on teachers' attitudes and pedagogies as they reflect on and enact teaching to promote intercultural understanding. With a focus on critical engagement with texts (including student, teacher and community multimodal texts) the teachers design pedagogies to support the three key areas recognising culture and developing respect; Interacting and empathising with others; and reflecting on intercultural experiences and taking responsibility (ACARA, 2012). Vicarious, virtual and face-to-face opportunities for enhancement of self-awareness and cultural acknowledgment; experiencing and exploring cultural difference; and for critical reflection on cultural encounters (Bredella, 2003) will be explored. Of interest is teacher and student agency (Fielding, 2001; 2004) in the selection of resources, development of knowledge, critical reflection and approaches to dealing with sensitive issues.

Poetry and prose as pedagogical tools for addressing difficult knowledges: translocational positionality and issues of collective political agency

In this paper the focus is on the possibilities that poetry and prose offer as pedagogical tools that can both accommodate and address difficult and painful knowledges. The paper presents and analyses poems and prose written by students at a non-traditional secondary school for disadvantaged girls (many of whom identify as Indigenous Australian). Through stories of grief and pain, but also hope and possibility, the poetry/prose book signifies a sense of collective political agency against oppressive relations towards the girls creating new moulds of existence. Contra to dominant approaches to recognising and valuing Indigeneity in schools, these writings represent Indigenous culture as a complex, dynamic and contingent social practice. While it is contended that a valuing of marginalised cultures is an important aspect of cultural recognition, the paper argues that a broader and more critical focus is required in beginning to address Indigenous oppressions.