This exploratory case study examines how various instructional strategies can influence elementary-aged student discourse patterns during an engineering design challenge. With engineering design increasingly entering the elementary science classroom both within the United States and internationally, students must now engage in discipline-specific…

Recent science educational reforms in the United States have prompted increased efforts to teach engineering design as an approach to improve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) learning in K-12 classrooms. Teaching design in early grades is a new endeavor for teachers in the United States. Much can be learned from design…

Freehand sketching is one of the most important and commonly used methods of generating and sharing budding ideas during the conceptual development portion of the preliminary phase of design. To develop one's skills, prolonged practice, acquiring instant feedback and suggestions while practicing are invaluable. The two key and indispensable parts…

For many designers, freehand sketching is the primary tool for conceptualization in the early stage of the design process. However, current education on concept presentation techniques rarely emphasizes the construction of the most fundamental spatial unit, the cube. Incorrect construction of spatial units leads to disproportions that deviate from…