by J. Trout Lowen

MOST MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS learn science in science class and math in math class. Technology is taught mainly in the context of computers. Engineering, if it’s taught at all, is yet another independent discipline.

Such is the siloed nature of traditional secondary education.

But what if engineering—and its problem-solving processes—could be incorporated into the curriculum for math, science, and technology? And why not incorporate it into English and physical education lessons, too? Would students learn more? Be more engaged? Would they take more science, math, and technology courses?

Led by physics teacher Scot Hovan, Mahtomedi
students measure trajectory and velocity using
eggs and rubber bands.

Educators at Mahtomedi Public Schools are getting at those questions through the district’s new Engineering Leadership Program. Working with Tamara Moore, assistant professor of math education, and Gillian Roehrig, associate professor of science education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, the district is developing new curriculum that will promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) instruction for all students.

The reasons for rethinking engineering and science education are many. Over the past decade the number of college students who major in STEM fields and pursue related careers has declined significantly. Only 40 percent of high school graduates are ready for college-level math and science classes, according to a recent report by national college admissions testing firm ACT. A recent international survey found U.S. high school science and math scores lag those of other highly developed countries.

Roehrig says there are two major issues that worry people about these statistics. “The first is an issue of general science literacy,” she explains. “The second is a pipeline issue. We aren’t preparing enough students in science, technology, engineering, and math to fill jobs in teaching and industry.”

This pipeline issue is a serious one, says Karen Klinzing, assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education. “Only 10.8 percent of middle school students have expressed an interest in pursuing a career in science or math, yet 90 percent of job growth is in these areas.”

Mahtomedi is bucking the state and national trend by focusing its curriculum on rigorous state science standards and through the Engineering Leadership Program. The district had the highest science proficiency levels in the state, according to recent results released by the Minnesota Department of Education. While average proficiency, measured at the fifth- and eighth-grade and high school levels, hovered around 40 percent for Minnesota as a whole, Mahtomedi averaged 71 percent.

Engineering interest

Mahtomedi began considering an engineering technology program in 2005–06, starting with a pre-packaged curriculum before deciding to pursue a more customized approach, says Mahtomedi Superintendent Mark Wolak (Ed.D. ’99). Instead of creating a program that would likely only attract students already interested in engineering, Mahtomedi decided to embed relevant skills across the curriculum. Last year the district asked volunteers to help develop new integrated approaches, and 25 middle and high school teachers responded.

Moore describes engineering as a way of thinking rather than just a discipline, which means it lends itself to an integrated curriculum. For example, she says, students in a physical education class may learn how a joint moves, and instructors can easily expand the discussion to include the biomedical aspects of engineering and artificial joints.

When engineering is taught in a real-world context, students gain a sense of how relevant concepts come into play in a wide variety of fields and careers, explains Moore.

To get at the communication aspects of engineering, some Mahtomedi students read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in English class and then participate in a modern-day boardroom strategy discussion about the climactic battle scene.

This approach means getting out of curriculum silos and making teaching and learning more interdisciplinary, says Wolak. “Those are very powerful philosophical changes in a public school,” he adds. “Many high schools today continue to be lecture-oriented. What we’re saying is we want to be inquiry-based; we want to be interdisciplinary, and we want to be helping students do problem-solving as a way of strengthening their learning.”

A student uses the engineering technology
concepts learned in her Mahtomedi eighth-
grade class to build a scale model of a
student-designed home.

Mahtomedi students also participate in model eliciting activities (MEAs)—real world, client-driven problems that require generalized, open-ended solutions that can be applied to different or changing circumstances.

“Most problem-solving prompts ask you to solve the problem at hand, and they require an answer,” says Moore, whose research focuses on engineering-related modeling using realistic situations and open-ended questions. “This is different because this is a solution to a class of problems, and therefore it needs to be very explicit in how to solve a set of problems so that someone else can implement the solution.”

Funding STEM’s future

Mahtomedi has created an advisory group of academics from local universities and colleges and a second advisory group comprised of local business people has helped secure grants and other funding for curriculum development and teacher training. 3M is one significant supporter of the Engineering Leadership Program, donating $66,000 in cash and equipment in 2007. Science, math, and economics education is one of the company’s biggest funding priorities, says Barbara Kaufmann, manager of education giving at the 3M Foundation. “These are disciplines that will serve students well if they go into engineering, or if they go into marketing and work for a high-tech company like 3M,” she adds.

3M is also funding two CEHD graduate student fellows who will help Moore and Roehrig replicate the Engineering Leadership Program in North St. Paul schools.

Mahtomedi has dedicated $100,000 for ongoing program development. Assistant professor Moore will spend the fall semester at Mahtomedi and work with assistant principal Kathe Nickleby—who directs the engineering program—to assess what teachers will need to implement the new curriculum and to evaluate the process and outcomes for teachers and students alike.

The district will continue to track the program’s impact on students beyond graduation. “We will be assessing the number of students interested in STEM in ninth grade, the number who take STEM classes, who graduate and go into STEM education in postsecondary, and then the number who actually get jobs in STEM fields,” says Nickleby. Eventually, she says, all Mahtomedi students in grades 6 through 12 will be exposed to STEM concepts in all classes.

Moore hopes that Mahtomedi’s Engineering Leadership Program will yield a curriculum that other schools can use to increase student interest in STEM.

“In some respects, this is my model eliciting activity,” she says.
 

Model eliciting activities

A MODEL ELICITING ACTIVITY (MEA) is meant to solve a client-driven problem in a replicable way. Students are given a reading activity—maybe in memo form—that sets up the reason for solving the problem, says Tamara Moore, assistant professor of math education. Then they are given two to three hours to design a sequence and a generalized solution that can be applied not only to the specific problem but also to a class of similar problems.

One example of an MEA that can be used for students from sixth grade through college asks students to determine a way to measure the roughness of material at the nanoscale—the minuscule measurement used in nanotechnology—to help extend the life of a part used in hip replacements. Students are told the part is currently made out of gold, but it wears out every 10 years, and that another company is looking at making the part from diamond, but diamond is rough.

“The problem has many dimensions,” Moore says, “big mathematical ideas in terms of scaling, in terms of sampling; it has a lot of statistical undertones in it. It’s a really rich problem, but it puts you in a very socially relevant context because students can see the need. ‘Wow, someone’s going to have to have one less surgery in their lives.’ ”

Model eliciting activities have helped improve retention in STEM fields, particularly among women and minority students, as Moore has discovered through her research with undergraduate engineering students.

“The study we did at the freshman level—which is really not that different than K–12—found the retention level went up even with the white males once we started using [MEAs],” she says. “So we’re interested in putting model eliciting activities in a K–12 setting, particularly the secondary setting, to encourage students to go into a STEM discipline. Are they more likely to stay if they choose to do that?”

Related stories

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An eye to the future

Tradition and innovation

Inquiring minds

More STEM at CEHD

 

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PHOTOS: Greg Helgeson

Additional reporting by Kate Hopper