Disciplinary literacy in Engineering

Wilson, A. A., Smith, E., & Householder, D. L. (2014). Using disciplinary literacies to enhance adolescents' engineering design activity. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(8), 676-686.

Background

Very little research has been conducted on how disciplinary literacy can enhance adolescents’ understanding and practice of engineering.

Aims

The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which two groups of adolescents used reading and writing to solve authentic problems through engineering design processes, and the literacy-related difficulties they faced.

Sample

The study consisted of two groups of 17-year-olds from a list of high school students who did well in mathematics and science and had attended Engineering State, a week-long programme in which students built a variety of structures and received feedback from engineers.

Method

Each group was given an authentic design challenge that the authors had created in consultation with a professional engineer. Group 1’s challenge was to redesign the school’s water system. Group 2’s challenge was to redesign a bathtub for use by a man with muscular dystrophy.

Three types of data were collected: (a) video and audio recordings of the adolescents as they addressed their respective challenges, which were later transcribed; (b) individual pre- and post-challenge interviews; (c) products such as sketches and writings they produced throughout the challenge, their final report to the clients, and lists of the websites they visited as recorded by tracking software. The data were coded according to the type of engineering design activity, literacy practices, and literacy-related difficulties.

Findings

Within each stage of the engineering design process (i.e. define problem, gather information, generate ideas, evaluate ideas, and communicate solutions), both teams enacted a series of literacy practices (such as making a list). Group 1 used a greater number of literacy practices in the problem definition stage, which formed the basis for other stages of the design process and this ultimately led to them creating a more convincing solution. Both teams, when discussing ideas, forgot promising design elements and neither could systematically evaluate their designs according to the criteria that they had previously agreed upon. The authors attributed this to both team’s failure to keep written artefacts. Also, both teams had difficulties in writing their solutions and frequently expressed frustration over selecting words that would communicate elements of their design.

Implications

The authors asserted that teachers could support adolescents’ engineering activity by modelling how engineers approach problems, including making their thought processes visible, and providing structured opportunities for students to evaluate their own literacy practices at each stage of the design process.

Original article retrieved from JSTOR.