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Analysis of Technology and Engineering Education Assessments

Technology and Engineering Education has deep roots in Project Based Learning, with its beginning in the Industrial Arts, and tracing its ancestry to craft apprenticeships. This constructivist philosophy supports the idea that the creation of an artifact lends itself to higher order cognitive processes. This study analyzed the content of middle school Technology and Engineering Education Rubrics for evidence that higher order cognition was being assessed. Five raters coded ninety-eight performance indicators from six rubrics for the evidence of declarative, procedural, schematic, and strategic knowledge. Gwet's AC1 and percent agreement were calculated to determine inter-rater reliability. Additionally, the performance criteria were coded for six engineering constructs. The Engineering Constructs from the performance criteria were extrapolated to the performance indicators to see which Engineering Constructs were supporting higher order cognition. Analysis included the determination of whether or not the rubrics that were analyzed supported higher order cognition as well as their performance indicators, performance criteria, and which Engineering Constructs support higher order cognitive processes. / Doctor of Philosophy / What used to be known as the shop class, or Industrial Arts, has morphed into Technology and Engineering Education. With the emphasis now on teaching engineering processes and Project Based Learning instead of manual skills, there is a lack of research on whether or not the assessments have evolved enough to assess higher levels of cognition. Higher level cognitive processes in engineering design are defined as those processes that are used to troubleshoot and create. This study analyzed middle school Technology and Engineering Education rubrics to look for evidence of assessing higher order cognition. Rubrics are a commonly used tool in Project Bases Learning as a form of assessment. Rubrics are separated into two distinct parts: performance criteria; and their performance indicators. The performance criteria were analyzed for six different Engineering Constructs, and the performance indicators were analyzed for four cognitive constructs. The analysis looked for evidence of higher-level cognitive constructs, and which Engineering Constructs supported higher level cognitive constructs.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/102205
Date02 February 2021
CreatorsPotter, Barry Scott
ContributorsEducation, Vocational-Technical, Bowen, Bradley D., Ernst, Jeremy V., Paretti, Marie C., Williams, Thomas O.
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation
FormatETD, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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