Resumen de Investigating middle-school students’ conceptions of trade-offs in design
Molly H. Goldstein, Robin S. Adams, Sóenay Purzer
The recent reform efforts in K-12 education urge for the integration of engineering with other subject matter such asscience. Design, a core practice in engineering, is new to many K-12 students, and thus, little is known about their designstrategies and conceptions. One design strategy, making trade-offs, is a necessary design practice, and is a key performancedimension in student design. However, research on K-12 students’ conceptions of balancing trade-offs is limited. Suchresearch is essential as we attempt to understand how students become informed designers and how we can support theirtransformation. Understanding how students prioritize design strategies after taking part in a design activity allows anopportunity to see how students’ conceptions of design activities change. In particular, this multi-method work addressesstudents’ use and prioritization of the term ‘‘balancing trade-offs’’ in design through the following research questions: (1)Do students report changes in their perceived importance of ‘‘balancing trade-offs’’ after engaging in a design project, and(2) How students’conceptionsof ‘‘balancing trade-offs’’ change after introduction of a design activity. This survey wasadministered as a pre- and post-test assessment in three middle schools with over 700 students. We performed McNemartests to quantitatively understand changing conceptions and qualitatively analyzed open-responses to get a deeperunderstanding of students’ rationale. Results suggest that after a design activity, ‘‘balancing trade-offs’’ became astatistically more important concept to students, but that students still did not have a sophisticated understanding of theterm without dedicated instruction.
