When young students engage with activities aimed at improving spatial reasoning, there is potential to also improve learning and performance in practical mathematics problem-solving tasks, scientific inquiries, and other STEM-based tasks. In this study, students worked in pairs to problem solve through 3D construction. The aim was to assess…

The focus of this article is to serve as an introduction to engineering principles in beam design using a lab activity. The concepts and skills learned in this article will lead students into concrete beam and form design and fabrication as well as the ability to precisely predict the amount of weight a concrete beam will hold during testing. An…

Technology and Engineering Education (T&EE) includes "engineering design challenges" to establish a connection to designing and problem-solving indicative of being an Engineer. Engineering design challenges involving bridges (or towers) have been a common feature of the discipline. These bridge design challenges ask students to…

Our students built a full-size, mobile planetarium in three weeks. The planetarium was built with commonly available, cheap construction materials. Our priorities were mobility, possibility of quick assembly and reassembly and the students' availability of materials in every place in the world. The students calculated all the parameters of the…

Symbolic representation refers to the use of physical or psychological processes to represent an object in a symbolic form. The present study investigated the development of children's symbolic representation using a new measure of children's block constructions. Ninety children (44 girls) in three age groups (3-4, 4-5, and 5-6 years) were…

Examining an interdisciplinary university course for architecture, wood science, and engineering students, this paper studies how the students' ability to master digital workflows influenced their success in learning collaborative design skills. It highlights potential challenges and opportunities posed by the introduction of new digital tools to…

Yucatec Maya theory of learning may be thought of as Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours. Children learn everyday and specialized tasks by observing and pitching in. This mode of learning is embedded in children's developmental niche in which parental ethnotheories play the central role. I present results from…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the Strategic Research Consortium Centre for Technological Innovation in Building and Civil Engineering (A-CITEEC) and its scientific strategy for the promotion of research and higher education in building and civil engineering. Design/methodology/approach: By means of an approach based on the…

Recruitment, retention, and preparation of students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields are critical to meeting the global challenges of the 21st century. Gamification--game playing concepts used in another activity--has been postulated as an active teaching strategy that engages students, encourages a sense of community,…

"Make to Learn Invention Kits" allow students to reconstruct working models of historic inventions. This design case describes the development of a series of "Make to Learn Electric Motor Invention Kits" that spans the time frame from development of the first patented electric motor in the United States to contemporary…

In this study children's learning of the concept, stability, during some building activities were investigated. It was also examined how a story can create meaning, having the children build for some animals in the story. Two preschool teachers and 10 children participated. Data consisted of video-recordings from activities with the children and…

Many educators are now being tasked to incorporate STEAM education to facilitate meaningful learning and engage students in critical thinking. STEAM education may be enhanced through integration of other school subjects such as physical education. The purpose of this article is to describe a STEAM educational approach to foster the creation of an…

Construction Education has been dwindling in K-12 classrooms for the past 20 years (Frazier, 2015; Chini, 1999; Jones, 1990). This has led to enrollment issues and professional shortages in the construction industry (Bigelow, 2015). Couple these facts with the call for STEM majors (Painter, 2012), and there is a noteworthy opportunity: combine…

Technology volition is the will to develop knowledge of, and use, the physical world to design products, processes and systems. The aim of this study was to contribute new knowledge of children's technology volition when they identify, build and improve technical constructions, and how teachers support this learning. Analysis focused on moments…

The objective of this study was to examine in what ways and to what extent preschoolers (5-6 years of age) manifest early Engineering Habits of Mind (EHoM) while engaging in an open-ended problem-solving construction task. The study comprised 228 children (120 boys and 108 girls). The study implemented a quantitative approach. The main research…