Leadership

Engineering a new curriculum

Rather than just address STEM teaching as discrete subjects, primary and secondary schools would do well embed it within an engineering curriculum focused on the problem-solving orientations of engineers, suggests Bill Lucas.
Teacher helping students with technology based task

Earlier this year, with my colleagues at the universities of Winchester and Manchester, I published the results of a two-year research project, which we believe has profound implications for the curriculum at all levels within the education system.

 Although it addressed a particular problem, our inability to create, as a nation, enough high-powered engineers, the report  Learning to be an Engineer: implications for the education system,  found that  a new reframing of the curriculum in terms of set of problem-solving  habits of mind typically found in top engineers was more important to prioritise than the set of subjects typically associated with engineering, such as maths, physics and design and technology. One of the most effective ways of developing young engineers in schools is a playful experimentation with the use of authentic design processes, a kind of problem-based learning. For the teachers involved, it became obvious that, not only could they deepen their pupils’ knowledge, they could also teach in a way that was engaging, creative and likely to develop young engineers.  

Rethinking pedagogy

Learning habits of mind chart
Centre for Real-World Learning’s Model of Engineering Habits of Mind

The teachers taking part in our research realised that teaching engineering, like developing creativity, depends at least as much on experimentation and imagination as it does on subject knowledge. They drew on three ‘signature pedagogies’2 - the engineering design process, playful experimentation and authentic engagement with engineers. The signature pedagogies – teaching and learning methods – were selected as those most likely to help pupils think like engineers.

Gomer Junior School in Hampshire, for example, introduced engineering sessions in every year group each Thursday  morning from 09.00-12.00. The sessions integrated maths, literacy, science and IT with the aim of motivating learners and fostering understanding of real-world applications of STEM subjects by experiencing hands-on activities, such as The Space Race project featuring Tim Peake’s Principia Mission3,  and involved programming Crumble-controlled moon buggies.  Underpinning their teaching and learning was a version of the engineering design process, the STEM Wheel. 

Stem flow chart
STEM Wheel

By contrast, Medway University Technical College (UTC) in Kent focused on raising awareness among staff and students about the six engineering habits of mind, their usefulness and ways of integrating them into the curriculum. Whole-school assemblies were organised around each habit of mind and icons for use on posters and rewards postcards were created. The systems thinking one is shown below.

Be like Bill STEM meme
The popular ‘Be Like Bill’ social media meme (above) was also adapted to explain the meaning of each engineering habit of mind, in this case problem-finding.

Medway UTC’s strategies to cultivate awareness of EHoM had an important impact on those teachers in subjects such as art and English, who felt much more included in the overall engineering mission of the school.

Some possible problems with problem-based learning

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