Currently, most education for the gifted, including STEM education for the gifted, places great emphasis on the development of knowledge, analytical skills, and less often, creative skills, but little or no emphasis on the development of wisdom-related skills. We argue that this failure to emphasize the development of wisdom is a serious mistake. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics can be used for good ends, but too often, are being used for bad ends by gifted individuals whose education and reward systems do not prepare them for the challenges the world faces today. The goal of this article and of this special issue is to encourage STEM education for gifted students that recognizes, develops, and rewards STEM wisdom-the seeking of a common good over the long- as well as the short term.

STEM education is often viewed as a gateway for preparing students to solve important world problems. However, STEM learning in K-12 settings often focuses on building technical skills without helping students reflect on larger questions, such as who their work serves, how it impacts others, and whether it contributes to a more just world. This paper explores how neurodiverse gifted learners, specifically children with autism and demonstrable high-level skills, engage in an engineering design activity, with attention to how they approach problem solving and their understanding of ethics, empathy, and social responsibility, collectively, STEM wisdom. This exploratory study draws on a naturalistic inquiry approach to explore how three children with autism participated in a rollercoaster design challenge. Findings show that the children were deeply engaged in problem solving and iterative design, but without structured prompts, they did not often consider questions of safety, user diversity, or broader societal impact. With gentle facilitation and reflection questions, children demonstrated early ethical reasoning and user-centered thinking, suggesting that STEM wisdom can be supported through the intentional design of learning environments. This study advocates for a broader definition of giftedness in STEM, one that encompasses neurodiverse learners and acknowledges the significance of cultivating adaptive intelligence. Adaptive intelligence includes the ability to think creatively, analytically, practically, and wisely for individual and societal benefit. The paper closes with practical suggestions for educators on how to design engineering learning experiences that encourage technical problem-solving and reflection on STEM's societal impact.

As an educator at heart, she has over 12 years of experience working with pre-college students to learn and engage in engineering.She has designed and developed several engineering learning opportunities/resources for in-school and out-of-school settings.At The Hill school, she has been developing integrated and multidisciplinary engineering and computer science programs and training teachers.She has over 7 years experience of conducting research in pre-college engineering education research, with over 50 publications and presentations.Her research focus includes exploring the engineering learning of children,

Engineering graduate programs in the United States are usually diverse. Students with different nationalities, races, ethnicities, genders, and religions work and collaborate with each other in classes, labs, and research projects. Graduate education often is called a transformative experience, in which students will have the opportunity to grow both professionally and personally. However, for many students, given their diverse backgrounds, the status quo culture in academia, and the long-term pressure, graduate education may become extremely overwhelming and frustrating. In order to support and help the transformation of students, it is important to explore the challenges that students face, and the potential support they can receive accordingly. In this paper, we aim to share the experiences of engineering graduate students who are first-generation immigrants. To reach this aim, we utilize a cooperative inquiry in which multiple people share and explore a topic from their own perspectives. The exploration happens through collective conversation and reflection of the authors as well as over ten other graduate students. The students and us share the same nationality, religion, and language. We are at different levels of our doctoral program in different engineering majors. The findings we share in this paper are the accumulation of all stories we heard, reflections on the stories, and our own experiences. This cooperative inquiry process can serve as a guide for other graduate students in discovering their personal journey during their graduate years. In addition, the findings can provide insights for university administrations and policymakers to ease this transformation process, especially for immigrant students.

In our call for proposals, our aim was to explore and document how COVID-19 has impacted pre-college engineering education (Alemdar et al., 2021). During COVID-19, engineering pre-college educators quickly adapted to new learning environments and technologies for teaching and learning. It was important to document these adaptations and lessons learned in formal and informal learning settings. The papers that made up this special show how lessons learned during this challenging time can inform the future of precollege engineering education. The papers offer both theoretical argumentation and empirical evidence to support their answers to the question of how adaptations during COVID-19 impacted pre-college engineering learning. A recurring theme of these papers is that worthy pre-college engineering learning experiences are possible even during unprecedented times. In this paper, we reflect on the papers, their individual and collective findings, and we highlight the impact of COVID-19 on education.

In this study we characterize ways that interactions children have with their parents and a coding game can support them in engaging in computational thinking. Taking a qualitative approach, we analyzed the video-recordings of 14 families of 5-to-7-year-old children as they played a computer-based coding game in an engineering and CT exhibit at a small science center. The findings revealed a variety of different types of interactions children had with the coding game and with their parents. We discuss the opportunities these interactions provided for children’s engagement in different CT competencies. While aspects of the computer interaction were crucial for children’s CT engagement, some interactions did not occur in ways that encouraged children’s use of CT. Parent–child interactions played a very important role in enabling the children’s computational thinking. Overall, we believe the parent–child and child–computer interactions complemented each other to fully engage children in CT. We provide implications for practitioners and designers who aim to support children’s engagement in different CT competencies.

Myside bias, a form of confirmation bias, is a major impediment to scientific thinking. It results in scientists, potential scientists, and consumers of science drawing conclusions that do not follow from data but rather that follow from prior scientific, ideological beliefs. Gifted people are at least as susceptible to these biases as are other people. We propose in this article a set of techniques for combating such bias. In particular, we suggest that gifted (and other) individuals seeking to draw scientific conclusions put themselves in the place of various individuals involved in scientific refereeing-in particular, of reviewers with varying prior predispositions (e.g., reviewers with different paradigmatic worldviews and reviewers who are picayune critics) and journal editors. Through these techniques, gifted individuals may spare themselves embarrassments that they might otherwise encounter, not despite, but even because of their own superior intellects.

Over the last two decades, a remarkable number of studies have examined the role of engineering education in supporting knowledge and skill building among children. In this paper, we present a synthesis of this literature to evaluate the added value of pre-college engineering design experiences at the elementary level, and ways researchers have gathered evidence of children’s development of this knowledge and skills. We have conducted a systematic literature review. The initial search across four different databases with relevant keywords resulted in over 3000 journal articles and conference papers. In a two-rounds screening, by applying the inclusion criteria first to titles and abstracts, and then to the full text, 78 peer-reviewed publications were included in this systematic literature review. We summarized and synthesized empirical evidence of student learning and engagement in engineering design activities, and approaches they were assessed and elicited. The thematic analysis revealed five categories of knowledge and skills: (1) disciplinary content knowledge; (2) engineering design practices, (3) engineering thinking skills; (4) professional skills; and (5) career awareness. Additionally, the assessment and evaluation approaches that were used for each of these categories were identified and discussed. The findings provide collective evidence of variety in student learning opportunities but also suggest the need to carefully define these knowledge and skills. Since a wide range of evaluation approaches were used to capture similar outcomes, we conclude that it is imperative to develop a shared research agenda by carefully defining the knowledge and skills we expect children to learn.

In this article, we present a hierarchical model for teaching scientific thinking to gifted students. This article follows up on an article published 40 years ago in this journal. The problem now, as 40 years ago, is that gifted students often are taught science courses at a more intensive level, but without their truly learning how to think scientifically. We argue that students of science need not only learn the content of science courses, but also learn, at a deep level, how to think scientifically. Our model addresses the issue of what this deep level consists of. Level I involves Teaching Scientific Knowledge. Level II involves Teaching Scientific Problem Solving. Level III involves the deepest level of scientific thinking: Teaching Scientific Problem Finding. We end the article with conclusions about these issues.

This innovative practice work in progress paper presents Biologically inspired design (BID) to transfer design principles identified in nature to human-centered design problems. The Biologically Inspired Design for Engineering Education (BIRDEE) program uses biologically inspired design to teach high school engineering in a way that uniquely engages students in the natural world. For high school students, identifying natural systems' analogues for human design problems can be challenging. Furthermore, it is often the case that students focus on and transfer superficial structures, rather than underlying design principles. Based on the Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) design ontology, we developed a modified cognitive scaffold called Structure-Function-Mechanism (SFM) to assist students and teachers with identifying functionally similar biological analogies and identifying and transferring design principles. In this paper we describe SFM and its importance in BID and our observations from teaching SFM to high school teachers during a multi-week professional development workshop in the summer of 2020. Based on teachers' work artifacts, transcriptions of discussions, and focus groups, we highlight the challenges of teaching SFM and our plans to scaffold this important concept for students and teachers alike.

This innovative practice work in progress paper presents the Biologically Inspired Design for Engineering Education (BIRDEE) project, to create socially relevant, accessible, highly-contextualized biologically inspired design experiences that can be disseminated to high school audiences engineering audiences in Georgia and nationally. Curriculum units are 6–10 weeks in duration and will meet many standards for high school engineering courses in Georgia. There will be three curriculum units (one for each engineering course in the 3-course pathway), each building skills in engineering design and specific skills for BID. Currently in its second year, BIRDEE has developed its first unit of curriculum and has hosted its first professional development with 4 pilot teachers in the summer of 2020. The BIRDEE curriculum situates challenges within socially relevant contexts and provides cutting-edge biological scenarios to ignite creative and humanistic engineering experiences to 1) drive greater engagement in engineering, particularly among women, 2) improve student engineering skills, especially problem definition and ideation skills, and 3) increase students awareness of the connection and impacts between the engineered and living worlds. This paper describes the motivation for the BIRDEE project, the learning goals for the curriculum, and a description of the first unit. We provide reflections and feedback from teacher work and focus groups during our summer professional development and highlight the challenges associated with building BID competency across biology and engineering to equip teachers with the skills they need to teach the BIRDEE units. These lessons can be applied to teaching BID more broadly, as its multidisciplinary nature creates challenges (and opportunities) for teaching and learning engineering design.

Biologically inspired design has become increasingly common in graduate and undergraduate engineering programs, consistent with an expanding emphasis by professional engineering societies on cross-disciplinary critical thinking skills and adaptive and sustainable design. However, bio-inspired engineering is less common in K-12 education. In 2019, the NSF funded a K-12 project entitled Biologically Inspired Design for Engineering Education (BIRDEE), to create socially relevant, accessible, and highly contextualized high school engineering curricula focusing on bio-inspired design. Studies have shown that women and underrepresented minorities are drawn to curricula, courses, and instructional strategies that are integrated, emphasize systems thinking, and facilitate connection building across courses or disciplines. The BIRDEE project also seeks to interest high school girls in engineering by providing curricula that incorporate humanistic, bio-inspired engineering with a focus on sustainable and authentic design contexts. BIRDEE curricula integrate bio-inspired design into the engineering design process by leveraging design tools that facilitate the application of biological concepts to design challenges. This provides a conceptual framework enabling students to systematically define a design problem, resulting in better, more well-rounded problem specifications. The professional development (PD) for the participating teachers include six-week-long summer internships in university research laboratories focused on biology and bio-inspired design. The goal of these internships is to improve engineering teachers’ knowledge of bio-inspired design by partnering with cutting-edge engineers and scientists to study animal features and behaviors and their applications to engineering design. However, due to COVID-19 and research lab closures in the summer of 2020, the research team had to transfer the summer PD experience to an online setting. An asynchronous, quasi-facilitated online course was developed and delivered to teachers over six weeks. In this paper, we will discuss online pedagogical approaches to experiential learning, teaching bio-inspired design concepts, and the integration of these approaches in the engineering design process. Central to the online PD design and function of each course was the use of inquiry, experiential and highly-collaborative learning strategies. Preliminary results show that teachers appreciated the aspects of the summer PD that included exploration, such as during the “Found Object” activity, and the process of building a prototype. These activities represented experiential learning opportunities where teachers were able to learn by doing. It was noted throughout the focus group discussions that such opportunities were appreciated by participating teachers. Teachers indicated that the experiential learning components of the PD allowed them to do something outside of their comfort zone, inspired them to do research that they would not have done outside of this experience, and allowed them to “be in the student's seat and get hands-on application”. By participating in these experiential learning opportunities, teachers were also able to better understand how the BIRDEE curriculum may impact students’ learning in their classrooms.

In this case study we report on the use of a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned form of Structure-Behavior-Function, called Structure-Function-Mechanism (SFM), to teach four high school engineering teachers an approach for Biologically Inspired Design (BID). Functional theories of design describe a natural way in which designers solve design problems. They provide support for case-based and analogical-based reasoning systems and have been used successfully to teach BID to undergraduate students. We found that teachers instructed on BID practice and pedagogy using our modified theory were able to grasp the structural concepts and looked for clear markers separating mechanism (behavior) and function. Because of the systems-of-systems nature of most biological entities, these boundaries were often subjective, presenting unique challenge to teachers. As high school engineering teachers look for methods to enhance their pedagogy and to understand multidisciplinary content, these findings will inform future curriculum development and professional learning approaches for engineering education.

Since the neurodiversity movement has begun, the awareness and conversation around the power of neurodiversity have also increased. At the same time, the engineering education community has been putting an effort towards creating diverse and inclusive engineering education that is welcoming to all individuals and help them achieve their full potential. The term neurodiversity refers to a subset of neurological conditions that typically result in an individual being labeled as having disabilities or special needs. These conditions include autism, ADHD, anxiety disorder, dyslexia and many others. Neurodiversity has recently begun to be part of this effort and gotten more attention among the researchers of the field. Among these different conditions, this study focuses on children with autism and their engagement in engineering activities. Some researchers argued that if effective pre-college engineering education is accessible to children with autism, they are more likely to choose STEM disciplines in higher education and be successful in the workforce. However, very limited research-based engineering resources have been developed with considerations of children autism (Author, 2018). Research has yet to examine the appropriateness of engineering learning opportunities for learners with autism. This research-based resource is created by translating research findings of a large project (Author 2020). It includes instructional approaches for researchers, teachers and curriculum designers to support the engagement of 3-5th-grade children with mild autism in engineering. In this resource, I share design guidelines for developing engineering design activities for children, with consideration of autism. The activities can be designed with any existing building kits and be used in any informal and formal learning settings. This resource also provides a list of strategies for educators that found to be effective in previous research. The resource will include an example of effective engineering design activities used and examined by children with autism. *References will be included at the time of submitting the final draft.

We invite original manuscripts that explore and document how COVID-19 has impacted pre-college engineering education.

Engineering has been integrated into K-12 learning experiences in both formal and informal settings. More recently, computational thinking (CT) has gained increased attention as an important learning outcome in K-12 settings and in engineering education. CT is a thinking process that is broader than programming and coding, and a necessary skill for every citizen to be prepared for careers in the 21st century. Additionally, CT has been described as crucial to engineering problem-solving and critical to the development of engineering habits of mind, such as systems thinking. However, not many studies have explored how children exhibit computational thinking. From this starting point, this study aims to contribute to the current body of knowledge on CT and young learners by examining children’s engagement in CT during participation in engineering and computing activities. This study was conducted with first-grade students during a field trip to a small science center in the Midwestern, U.S. The field trip was designed to engage the children in a range of low-tech to high-tech engineering and computing activities. The activities included solving an open-ended engineering design problem by coding a developmentally appropriate robot, interacting with an engineering and CT exhibit that asked students to work on a set of problems involving, for example, building a puppy playground utilizing big blue blocks where they follow a given problem, and playing with a coding game where students code through interactive puzzles. The research question that we aim to answer is, What does children’s engagement in computational thinking competencies look like when solving different engineering and computing problems? Twenty-one children from that first-grade class participated in this informal learning experience. However, for this work in progress, we were interested in examining children’s engagement with various CT tasks. Therefore, we conducted a case study of one group of four children that allowed us to followed a subset of students across the three activities. Using a video-analysis method, we are analyzing 60 minutes of video-recordings of this group participating in all three activities. Data analysis is still in process, but the preliminary findings indicate that during participation in the different activities, there is evidence of children engaging in seven different CT competencies including, abstraction, patterning, problem decomposition, debugging, and troubleshooting, algorithm, and procedures, use of data and simulation. When looking across the three activities, student engagement in these same competencies looked different, based on the nature of the activity. The details of the findings will be discussed in the paper.

Just as engineering and computational thinking have recently gained increased attention in pre-college school-based education, many museums and science centers have also designed exhibits and experiences to promote computational thinking and engineering learning. Recent reports suggest that computational and engineering thinking can empower each other, and engineering design can be an appropriate context for children's engagement in computational thinking. Previous studies have documented young children's abilities to engage in engineering thinking and other studies have collected evidence of young children's abilities to engage in computational thinking. However, there is little research that explores how children's engagement in both engineering and computational thinking can support each other. Hence, in this qualitative case study, we aimed to examine how 5 to 7-year-old children engage in computational thinking competencies in the context of a family based engineering design activity. This activity was conducted at a small science center exhibit. In our presented findings we map children's enactment of at least one CT competency to children's engagement in engineering design actions.

Increased recognition of the importance of computational thinking as a core skill for all students has led many states to adopt and implement computer science standards, with a focus on teaching computational thinking. Consequently, there is an increased need to prepare educators that are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and instructional strategies required to teach computational thinking. In this case study, we present instructional strategies utilized by informal educators (i.e., parents) to facilitate computational thinking amongst five-to-seven-year-old children during two activities (a no-tech and a technology-based activity). The data for this empirical study includes videos of the parent-child interactions during both activities. Through a two-phase coding process (deductive coding, using CT competencies to capture children’s CT, followed by inductive coding to identify the emergent themes for the strategies parents used to engage children in CT) we identified productive strategies of: Questioning, Modeling, and Motivation/Encouragement to engage children in five CT competencies.

Research in pre-college engineering education has been on a sharp rise in the last two decades. However, less research has been conducted to explore and characterize the engineering thinking and engagement of young children, with limited attention to children with special needs. Conversations on broadening participation and diversity in engineering usually center around gender, socio-economic status, race and ethnicity, and to a lesser extent on neurodiversity. Autism is the fastest growing neurodiverse population who have the potential to succeed in engineering. In order to promote the inclusion of children with autism in engineering education, we need to gain a deep understanding of their engineering experiences. The overarching research question that I intend to answer is how do children with mild autism engage in engineering design tasks? Grounding this study in theories of Constructivism and Defectology, I focused on children’s engagement in engineering design practices and the ways their parents supported their engagements. To engage children with mild autism in engineering, I have developed an engineering design activity by considering suggestions from these theories and previous literature on elementary-aged children’s engagement in engineering design, and by focusing on individuals with mild autism strengths in STEM. This activity provides opportunities for children to interact with their parents while solving engineering design problems. The families are asked to use a construction kit and design their solutions to the problem introduced in the engineering design activity. The engineering design activity consists of a series of five challenges, ranging from well- to ill-structed. This is an exploratory qualitative case study, using a multiple case approach. These cases include 9-year-old children with autism and their families. Video recordings of the families are the main source of data for this study. Triangulation of data happens through interviewing parents and children, pictures of children’s artifacts (i.e. their prototypes), and use of the Empathizing-Systemizing survey to capture background information and autism characteristics. Depending on the data source, I utilized different methods including video analysis, thematic analysis and artifact analysis. This study expands our understanding of what engineering design can look like when enacted by children with mild autism, particularly as engineering design is considered to be a very iterative process with multiple phases and actions associated with it. The findings of this study show that these children can engage in all engineering design phases in a very iterative process. Similarities and differences between these children’s design behaviors and the existing literature were discussed. Additionally, some of the behaviors these children engaged in resemble the practices of experienced designers and engineers. The findings of this study suggest that while children were not socially interacting with their family members when addressing the challenges, their parents played an important role in their design engagement. Parents used different strategies during the activity that supported and facilitated children’s engineering design problem-solving. These strategies include soliciting information, providing guidance, assisting both verbally and hands-on, disengagement and being a student of the child. This study provides aspirations for future research with the aim to promote the inclusion of children with neurodiversity. It calls for conducting similar research in different settings to capture the engineering design engagement of children with mild autism when interacting with teachers, peers, siblings in different environments. Additionally, the findings of this study have implications for educators and curators of engineering learning resources.