STEM Integration through shared practices: examining secondary science and engineering technology students’ concurrent think-aloud protocols

Abstract

To address the complete vision of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States. [2013]. Next Generation Science Standards: For States, by States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press of the United States, the research focused on how scientific inquiry and engineering design shared practices promote design thinking and problem-solving skills. High school science and engineering technology students participated in the integrated STEM project, TRAILS, and learned engineering design-based integrated STEM lesson, D-BAIT. After each lesson implementation, triads of students from each class participated in a Concurrent Think-Aloud (CTA) protocol session. During the protocol session, the triads of students engaged in a design task as a team and discussed to solve a transfer problem, which required the application of STEM knowledge from the integrated STEM lesson. A total of 27 Think-Aloud datasets were collected and analyzed from the 2017–2019 school years. The results show that key features of TRAILS (scientific inquiry, biomimicry, and engineering design) emerged from the dialogue of both groups (engineering technology and Biology students). Additionally, patterns from the cognitive protocols (transitions between scientific inquiry, biomimicry, and engineering design) suggest that both groups used similar approaches to solving the engineering design problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Design cognition
• integrated STEM
• think-aloud protocol
• shared practice

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Andrew Joon Cha for reproducing Figure 2.1. Relationship between situated learning, engineering practice (engineering design), and science practice (scientific inquiry) (Kelley 2010, reproduced by Andrew Joon Cha, 2020).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

NSF disclaimer

Elements of this paper are supported by the National Science Foundation, award #DRL-1513248. Any opinions and findings expressed in this material are of the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

Author contributions

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception, data collection, and data analysis: Han, J.; study design and review: Kelley, T. R. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF): [Grant Number DRL-1513248].