Assessing High School Students' Engineering Design Capability Using Biology Problem Scenarios

Since the beginning of the 21 st century,the importance of engineering in the basic education stage has become increasingly prominent.In today's booming STEM education,the importance of engineering is also recognized by many researchers at home and abroad.In the global education process,engineering and engineering design have received much attention in the pre-university education phase.In 2013,engineering education has been placed at an important position that cannot be ignored in A Framework for K-12 Science Education.In 2017,engineering as an independent learning module or field entered the new curriculum standard of elementary school science and the new curriculum standard of high school biology,marking the formal entry of engineering into the basic education stage of China.In engineering education,Committee on K-12 Engineering Education has pointed out that K-12 stage engineering education should attach great importance to the engineering design.Chinese science education researchers also gradually put forward the importance of engineering design,pointing out that engineering in basic education is the same important as scientific inquiry as the solution to problems.Engineering design will become more and more concerned with the development of science and technology education.At present,domestic research in the field of engineering education is in its infancy;foreign research on engineering design capability for high school students is less,and more literature problem scenarios or physics problem scenarios are used as information carriers.Based on biology problem scenarios,this study aims to measure and evaluate the engineering design ability of high school students from the perspective of thinking and focuses on the overall engineering design capability of high school students and the current status of each dimension,as well as comparing the differences in male and female students' abilities.The author mainly adopts research methods such as literature research,text analysis method,test method and interview.After defining the core concepts and combing relevant research results at home and abroad,the author constructs a framework of engineering design capability for high school students with five dimensions of defining the problems,designing solutions,evaluating solutions,optimizing solutions and trading off.Then the author designs and revises the evaluation tools according to the framework.Formal tests were conducted with 164 high school students and 95 high school students from 2 key middle schools in Shanghai,and some students were interviewed.The results of quality inspection of the tools show that the evaluation tools revised after two rounds of trials have good quality.The study found that:(1)Regardless of the overall ability or the dimensions of the elements,the engineering design capability of the first and second year students is significantly different.The overall level of the second year students is significantly higher than that of the high school students.The proportion of students is larger.(2)There is no statistically significant difference in the engineering design capability between boys and girls in terms of overall competence and from the four dimensions of defining engineering problems,designing solutions,evaluation solutions and optimizing solutions.In the sub-dimension of trading off,the ability level of girls is significantly higher than that of boys.In the proportion of high-level students,in addition to the dimension of defining engineering problems and evaluating solutions,the proportion of male students is higher than that of female students,and the other three sub-dimensions have a higher proportion high-level students in females.(3)The typical problems that students are prone to in completing the engineering design task are lacking scientificalness,comprehensiveness and feasibility.They do not keep the standards and restrictions in mind or even ignore that,being subjective.In addition,some students do not grasp the key points when defining standards and restrictions,and it is more general in designing the solutions.Meanwhile,some students omit to evaluate some solution,and the solutions are not concrete enough when they optimize the solutions.Last but not least,some students lack overall awareness as they ignore the needs of the users of the solutions.