Middle Childhood Education: Engineering Concepts, Practices, and Trajectories

This chapter discusses the important features of age-appropriate engineering education for school-age children. It lays out core concepts and practices for engaging children, articulating eight design parameters that include narrative context; goals, constraints, and requirements; engineering design processes and epistemic practices; exploring materials and methods; application of science and mathematics; analysis of data for planning and redesign; collaboration; and agency. It considers three bands: ages 7–8 (beginning readers), ages 9–10 (middle childhood), and ages 11–12 (preadolescents). This chapter extends the trajectory presented in chapter “Engineering Concepts, Practices, and Trajectories for Early Childhood Education” (Cunningham et al. In English LD, Moore TJ (eds) Early engineering learning. Springer, New York, in press). For each design parameter of engineering education, the chapter describes what engineering activity looks like for each age band, drawing on the authors’ experience with curriculum design, evaluation, and observation and research in classrooms.