Engineering, Emotion, and Education

Hello and welcome to my blog. I’m at the beginning of another iteration of my work life, and I’d like to share this exciting time with you. Here’s a synopsis of where I’ve been so far: ten years as an aerospace engineer, four years as a provider of informal science education to preschool and early elementary school children, ten years as a teacher and K-12 science coordinator for private and public schools, then five years as a university-based provider of science outreach services and support to K-12 schools.

I’ve left my world of work to write my Ph.D. dissertation. My dissertation topic – the jargon-lite version – is “the mental models elementary school teachers have of what engineers do.” I chose this topic because of a combination of a happy reconnection with someone from my engineering past (you’ll have to return to read that story) and my own experiences over the years talking with elementary school teachers about what I used to do as an engineer. In addition to my own curiosity about the topic, I have a pragmatic motivation. It’s likely that our new national science education standards will contain design/engineering standards that elementary teachers will have to teach. We owe it to teachers to help them teach engineering with curriculum and professional development designed to bridge the gap between the teaching and engineering professions. I’m passionate about this. As any competent engineer will tell you, how you frame a problem determines the nature of the solution. In order to bridge the gap between the two professions, we must first understand it. My dissertation work will help us understand that gap.

I’m equally passionate about combining social and emotional learning opportunities with K-12 engineering education. Engineers have been networking their knowledge and learning in the service of design and innovation long before the internet and Web 2.0 applications existed. It’s what we’ve been trained to do and is an integral part of engineering practice. Granted, knowledge sharing among engineers is decidedly more technical than social, but engineering knowledge is socially constructed nonetheless. Engineering education offers a natural context for social and emotional learning in the K-12 classroom. What do I mean by social and emotional learning? That takes me right back to the preschool/early childhood iteration of my career.

Every one of us, young or old, wants to feel valued, like we belong to a community, and like we have some power over our circumstances. These are basic emotional needs. When engineers are creating a new object or redesigning an existing one, they form teams of people who contribute differently to the engineering process. Each member of the design team is valued for her unique perspective and contribution to the team’s process. They form a shared identity around the object they are designing (i.e. the widget group). Their collaborative efforts bring something entirely new into existence, which can evoke powerful feelings of agency.

Coming soon…
The difference between school science and school engineering
Engineering in the strength-based classroom