Towards a Unified Theory of Engineering Education Oscar Humberto Salcedo University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected]
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University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2017-01-01 Towards A Unified Theory Of Engineering Education Oscar Humberto Salcedo University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Science and Mathematics Education Commons, and the Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons Recommended Citation Salcedo, Oscar Humberto, "Towards A Unified Theory Of Engineering Education" (2017). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 547. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/547 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TOWARDS A UNIFIED THEORY OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION OSCAR H. SALCEDO OROZCO Doctoral Program in Teaching, Learning and Culture APPROVED: David J. Carrejo, Ph.D., Chair Olga M. Kosheleva, Ph.D. Peter Golding, Ph.D. Timothy G. Cashman, Ph.D Charles H. Ambler, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Oscar H. Salcedo 2017 TOWARDS A UNIFIED THEORY OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION by OSCAR H. SALCEDO OROZCO, BSME, MAPOLS DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Teacher Education Department THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO December 2017 Acknowledgements Callon and Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT) contextualizes human achievement––no one acts in a vacuum. Never more true than in this case. Although only one name appears on the title page, this dissertation is the result of the efforts of many people and I would like to express my sincere appreciation to those people who provided me with invaluable assistance and encouragement. I am extremely grateful to my wife Sofia and our children Andrea, Michael, and Oscar Jr. for believing in education and for supporting my journey. Thanks and love to Jasmine, Isela, Miranda, and Abigail––beautiful granddaughters! A world of thanks to my father and brothers for their lifelong support. From the bottom of my heart, all my love and gratitude to my two moms: Guadalupe and Eloisa. My sincere gratitude to my advisor Associate Professor Dr. David J. Carrejo for long discussions about ontology and epistemology and the many faces of constructivism. Also extremely valuable was his time reading my drafts and providing feedback and guidance. I would like to also thank the members of my committee Dr. Olga M. Kosheleva, Dr. Peter Golding, and Dr. Timothy G. Cashman for their mentoring, guidance, and valuable feedback. I owe many thanks to a great friend and colleague, Mr. Manny Pacillas for exciting discussions about education, scholarship, ontology, and most importantly life in general. Special thanks to Dr. Ricardo Pineda and Dr. Jose D. Villalobos, who supported and encouraged persistence in my education journeys. Drs. Pineda and Villalobos are truly models of what human beings, gentlemen, and scholars should be. I have learned much from knowing them. iv Abstract STEM education is an interdisciplinary approach to learning where rigorous academic concepts are coupled with real-world lessons and activities as students apply science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in contexts that make connections between school, community, work, and the global enterprise enabling STEM literacy (Tsupros, Kohler and Hallinen, 2009). The purpose of the dissertation is to develop a unified theory of engineering education based on philosophies of mathematics, science, technology & engineering, and engineering education. Using purposive sampling methods, the thesis constructs “representative” philosophy statements from the STEM fields based on the criteria of Constructivism, Progressivism, and/or Pragmatism. These statements are analyzed to identify significant constructs embedded in them. Eighty-seven constructs were identified of which 32 were mentioned more than 100 times. These 32 were synthesized into the 8 super constructs below using Hermeneutic Circle and Mayer and Sparrowe concept integration methods: 1) Science, 2) Social, 3) Engineering, 4) Technology, 5) Knowledge, 6) Concept, 7) Philosophy, and 8) Mathematics. These constructs are then used to argue for a new model and approach to curriculum and instructional integration, and the role for engineering education in the STEM classroom. Since “science” and “society” were the two most powerful constructs, the integrated model argues that the “S” in STEM should be read as Science: natural and social which adds significantly from social science, liberal arts, humanities to the STEM construct. The model argues the reconceptualization of instruction less as exposure to separate fields of content to be mastered and more as a correlating center of student experiences with the meaningful construction and application of knowledge to activity. Keywords: Mathematics; Engineering Education; Philosophy of Education; Philosophy of Engineering, Liberal Arts; Constructivism; Epistemology. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………………iv Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………...v Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………………………...vi List of Tables …………………………………………………………………………….............ix List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………….............x Chapter 1 Education.…………………....……..…………………………………………………..1 1.1 Research Questions………………………………………………………………2 1.2 Millennials………………………………………………………………………..4 1.3 STEM ……………………………………………………………………………7 1.4 Liberal arts and humanities ……………………………………………….........10 Chapter 2 Literature Survey….…………………………………………………………..............20 2.1 Philosophy of mathematics………………………………………………….......20 2.2 Philosophy of science ...........................................................................................25 2.3 Philosophy of technology and engineering .……………………………….........28 2.4 Philosophy of engineering education .……….…………………………….........33 Chapter 3 Methods ……………………………..……………………………….…………........35 3.1 Zachman Framework .…………………………………...………………….......36 3.2 Mayer and Sparrowe .……………………………………………………….......40 3.3 A Priori methods .………..………………………………………………….......42 3.3.1 Reflection. …..………….………………………………………….......43 3.3.2 Synthesis ………………………………….………………………........44 3.3.3 Hermeneutics ...…………………………………………………….......44 3.3.4 Education in the 21st century..………………………………………......46 3.3.5 Engineering and Liberal Arts ..……………………………………........47 Chapter 4 Dataset processing and results……….. …………………………………................52 4.1 Conceptual and operational definitions …………………………………….......52 4.1.1 Philosophy …………………………………………………………......52 4.1.2 Epistemology ………………………………………………………......53 4.1.3 Constructivism ……………………………………………………........53 4.1.4 Engineering ………………………………………………………….....53 4.1.5 Theory ……………………………………………………………….....54 4.2 Representative philosophy statements ……………………………………….....61 4.2.1 Criteria ………………..…………………………………………….......62 4.2.1.1 Constructivism ……………………………………………….....62 4.2.1.2 Progressivism . ……………………………………………….....63 4.2.1.3 Pragmatism …. ………………………………………………....63 4.3 Words and Concepts ……………………………………………………….......65 4.4 Representative Philosophy statement about mathematics education .………....66 vi 4.5 Representative Philosophy statement about science…. ……………………….....75 4.6 Representative Philosophy statement about technology and engineering ….….....78 4.7 Representative Philosophy statement about engineering education…..……..... ....81 4.8 First iteration results… .………………………………………………………......83 4.9 Qualitative synthesis….……………………………………………………...........84 4.10 Analysis of results ….…………………………………………………………......88 Chapter 5 Unified Theory of Engineering Education………………….…………………….......93 5.1 Engineering design process..……………………………………………. …......93 5.2 Discovery vs. Invention…………………………………………………................100 5.3 Engineering identity ..…………………………………………………………......103 5.4 STEM curriculum integration.. .………………………………………………......106 5.4.1 Correlated curriculum ………………………………………………......108 5.4.2 Broad fields curriculum……………………………………………........110 5.5 Organized knowledge....………………………………………………………. ....111 5.6 Engineering praxis ethos...…………………………………………………….......112 5.7 Extraction of constructs... …..………………………………………………….....116 5.8 Constructing the model...…………………………………………………..............117 5.9 Examining the Design Process...……………………………………………….......121 5.10 Assessment methods for STEM... …………………………………………….......128 5.11 Functional integration of the model ...….……………………………………........129 5.12 Research questions based on dissertation research. ...………………………. .......130 Chapter 6: Summary, contributions, and future research ….……………………………........134 6.1 Summary of literature survey ………………………………………………......134 6.2 Summary of methods…………………………………………………..................135 6.1.2 Purposive sampling …………………………………………………........137 6.2.2 Zachman Framework.………………………………………………….....138 6.2.3 Mayer and Sparrowe …………………………………………………......138 6.2.4 Hermeneutic Circle ...……………………………………………….........138 6.2.5 Words and Phrases ...………………………………………………..........140 6.2.6 WordNet Application ………………………………………………….....141 6.3 Summary of results …………..………………………………………………........141 6.4 Conclusions ………………………………………………………………….....145 6.5 Delimitations ……………………………………………………………….......149 6.6 Limitations ………………….…………………………………………….........150