Board 125: Influence of an Entrepreneurial Mindset on P-12 Students’ Problem Framing (Work-in-Progress)

Engineering design involves problem-framing as well as problem-solving because the problems faced by engineers are ill-structured and can be represented in multiple ways. Also, a design situation calling for an engineering solution requires engineers to recognize not only technical also non-technical goals and constraints and the interactions between the variables with a broad range of perspectives. However, examining P-12 engineering design cognitive processes, multiple studies have indicated a lack of students’ cognitive effort to analyze a given design scenario and to structure and formulate a design problem in any effective or efficient ways. Also, students tend to fail in identifying multiple, conflicting goals and constraints in a given design scenario. In the meantime, the characteristics of entrepreneurial engineers’ thinking and actions (Kriewall & Mekemson, 2010) imply the possibility of improving P-12 students’ problem framing through teaching an entrepreneurial mindset in engineering design contexts. Therefore, this paper aims at getting P-12 engineering education educators engaged in the discussion about the effectiveness of teaching entrepreneurial skills and thinking in engineering design contexts in terms of its influence on students’ cognitive ability in problem framing. As part of the effort, in this work-in-progress paper, we discuss the importance of problem framing in engineering design and then identify P-12 students’ lack of ability in problem framing through presenting the data of elementary and secondary students’ cognitive processes for an engineering design task. Also, we suggest an instructional idea for improving students’ problem framing, which is providing P-12 students with the opportunities to learn an entrepreneurial mindset through a multidisciplinary design and innovation course. Lastly, we will propose a qualitative case study to examine how their learning of entrepreneurial mindset impact on their cognitive operations in problem framing. Problem framing in engineering design An engineering design problem is typically ill-structured without completely predefined goals and constraints. These characteristics require engineers to interpret the design situation and structure and formulate a problem before solving it. Discussing the characteristics of design problems, Jonassen (2011) states that on the structuredness and complexity continua, design problems tend to be the most ill-structured and complex with the high degree of freedom in their representations, processes, or solutions. Furthermore, focusing more on design problems in engineering contexts, Jonassen, Strobel, and Lee (2006) illustrate that the problems faced by engineers are ill-defined with aggregates of different issues and allow engineers to use multiple forms of problem representations. In this context, Atman et al. (2007) describe that in an early stage of engineering design, an engineer formulates a problem through identifying goals or essential issues in a design situation. Dorst (2011) refers to these activities as problem framing. More specifically, Simon (1973) states that problem framing is the cognitive process of outlining a mental, subjective representation reflecting the designer’s interpretation of the current situation and desired situation. Consequently, problem framing is an essential part of the engineering design process. Also, engineering design situations often involve multiple, conflicting views and standpoints, which requires engineers to consider various contexts including both technical and non-technical issues in structuring and representing a design problem for the situation. Jonassen et al. (2006) illustrate that an engineering design problem involves a variety of goals and constraints that sometimes contradict each other and include not only technical but also nontechnical factors. In terms of the non-technical goals and constraints, they state that engineering design problems involve “political constraints, such as regulations or acceptability to citizens; environmental constraints, such as requirements to meet environmental regulations or obtain permits; economic constraints, such as most often dealing with the budget; and cultural constraints, such as the corporate culture or local context” (p.143). Their description suggests that engineers need an extensive range of perspectives beyond technical areas to recognize various issues mingled in a design situation. P-12 students’ ability in problem framing For beginning designers, Crismond and Adams (2012) state that “by perceiving the design task as a well-structured problem and believing there is a single correct answer, they (beginning designers) can act prematurely and attempt to solve it immediately” (p.747). Correspondingly, findings from multiple engineering design cognition studies have suggested that P-12 students tend to minimally devote their cognitive effort toward problem framing when engaged in an engineering design task. In these studies, students dedicate a limited amount of time to the cognitive operations involved in analyzing a given design scenario and defining a problem in their own terms (Grubb, 1996; Welch, 1996; Welch and Lim, 2000; Wilson et al., 2013; Strimel, 2014) and often fail to identify the actual requirements and constraints related to the given design tasks (Lammi & Becker, 2013; Mentzer, 2014; Wilson et al., 2013). The authors also collected and analyzed preliminary design cognition data from a total of 27 participants (10 kindergarteners, nine 4th graders, and eight 11-12th graders), which likewise displays a lack of P-12 students’ cognitive effort to frame a design problem. The design cognition data was collected using the concurrent think-aloud protocol method which required the participants to verbalize their thoughts while they worked to develop a solution prototype to a given design task. Ericsson and Simon (1993) explain that an individual’ verbal report based on thinking-aloud while framing and solving a problem reveals one’s directly verbalized cognitive processes for the task. Also, to facilitate data collection, participants were equipped with pointof-view cameras that enabled the collection of verbal protocols as well as the participants’ nonverbal cues or observational protocol. Used in the data collection, the design challenges presented involved different scenarios depending on the participants’ academic level. Some examples of the design challenges can be seen in Table 1. Following the data collection, the recorded think-aloud protocols were segmented into individual utterances and coded using the 17 mental processes for solving technological problems, defined and validated by Halfin (1973). The operational definition of each mental process is provided in Appendix A. Based on a review of the literature, the mental process of modeling was determined by the researchers to be too similar to the other codes of model/prototype constructing (Halfin, 1973). As a result, only 16 of the 17 mental processes were used to code the data. To enable the coding process, two coders used NVivo software, which permits a researcher to segment and code the recorded protocols simultaneously while observing the video recordings. To ensure the reliability of this procedure, the agreement rates and Cohen’s Kappa values between the two coders’ results were calculated. Table 1 Examples of Design Challenges Participants Design Task Time Kindergarten • Design and build a box that does not allow frogs in but allows bugs access in/out 30 mins 4 Grade • Design and build something to conceal and carry a secret message for the army 30 mins 11-12 Grade • Design and build an inexpensive, easy to use, easy to assemble, durable, and low maintenance water purification system using low cost, readily available materials to quickly remove contaminants