Engineers
We also involved practicing engineers from different
fields for as many of the activities as they could attend,
given their work commitments. The engineers were employees
of our state Department of Transport and Main
Roads, who supported our research project. Some engineers
attended more than one school, such as a female
civil engineer who was keen to visit a state and private
school and shared her experiences in road design and
construction. The engineers’ sharing of their occupational
experiences was especially valuable in enriching
the real-world context of the activities. Where possible,
the engineers also observed the students undertake the
activities and we asked them to not directly influence
their responses.
Learning experiences and implementation
The aims of our study included introducing students to
the diverse world of engineering including exploring its
different fields and ways in which engineers work towards
improving society. Students’ appreciation and application
of the processes of engineering design underpinned each
of the problem activities implemented during the study. It
was important that students be encouraged to apply their
own ideas and approaches to designing and creating their
models, rather than a “conventional” approach that assumes
students acquire and apply information in the exact
form we desire and convey to them (Zawojewski et al.
2008).
The problem addressed here, the Aerospace Engineering
Challenge, was the second of three multi-component
activities that we had developed with the teachers during
the first year of our study. The students had not been
exposed to the fundamental principles of flight prior to
the problem and had only been introduced to engineering
design in the previous problem.
We chose the aerospace problem because it engages
students in the processes of engineering design in an appealing
and hands-on manner, and it draws upon core
mathematics and science content of the teachers’ curriculum
(i.e., measurement, geometry, and forces). The problem
also addressed components of their new technology
curriculum including generating design ideas that match
requirements and communicating the details of a design
through a 3-D model (“physical prototype,” Crismond and
Adams 2012).
The problem spanned several class periods from early
morning through to early afternoon, with one of the private
schools completing the problem during the first
period of the following day. The time devoted to the
problem ranged from approximately 4 h 20 min to 5 h
30 min. We supplied the teachers with detailed lesson
booklets, including additional web-based resources on
aerospace engineering, and provided workbooks for the