An Assessment Study On The Engineering Thinking Of Middle School Students Based On STEM Courses

In the 21st century,talents should have the ability to solve cross-domain problems in complex situations.In order to meet this requirement,the goal of personnel training in basic education has also shifted from knowledge-based to literacy-based,and STEM education has been developing rapidly because of its interdisciplinary feature of cultivating students' multi-faceted literacy.Engineering inquiry is one of the mainstream forms in the classroom of STEM education,and engineering thinking and innovation ability are the core competencies that students need to develop in the process of engineering inquiry,but the weakness of basic engineering education in China makes the assessment of related literacy still very scarce.This study aims to explore the current situation of engineering thinking development of secondary school students by constructing an engineering thinking assessment framework integrating innovation ability and relying on Shanghai engineering technology-based STEM curriculum resources.The study is divided into two main parts as follows.(1)The development of an engineering thinking assessment framework and assessment tools for secondary school students integrating innovative abilities.Firstly,based on the literature and theories to sort out the building blocks of engineering thinking,combined with the author's classroom observation,the engineering thinking assessment indexes were screened out,and then the Delphi method was used to determine the weights of each index,and the framework with engineering decision making,engineering design,engineering implementation and engineering evaluation as the main indexes was constructed,in which the innovation ability was borrowed from the PISA2021 creative thinking framework,and it was incorporated into the evaluation activities of engineering design indicators.Based on this assessment framework,bicycle was selected as the carrier of the integrated test situation,and the quantitative evaluation scheme of engineering thinking was designed.(2)A study of secondary school students' engineering thinking development in engineering technology-based STEM courses.With the help of Shanghai engineering technology-based STEM curriculum resources,the engineering thinking assessment tool was used to test different categories of secondary school students.Through quantitative and qualitative analysis methods,it was found that the engineering technology-based STEM curriculum could significantly promote the development of engineering thinking of secondary school students,and the engineering thinking of different categories of students within the curriculum showed different characteristics,while the grade level variable had little effect on the engineering thinking of secondary school students.Finally,based on teacher interviews and classroom observations,potential problems in the engineering thinking-oriented STEM curriculum and classroom were sorted out,and targeted countermeasures for teaching and evaluating secondary school students' engineering thinking were explored,providing opinions for the engineering technology-based STEM curriculum to promote the development of secondary school students' engineering thinking in China.