Written evidence submitted by the Centre for Real-World Learning (GAP0042)

Executive summary

• This submission presents evidence for closing the STEM skills gap by engaging with schools and teachers to enable more young people to ‘think like an engineer’ using engineering habits of mind (EHoM).

• There are significant gaps in knowledge and understanding among young people, their parents and teachers about what engineers do in the real world and how they do it. 

• However, engineers themselves are very clear about the knowledge and ‘engineering habits of mind’ that they need for ‘doing’ engineering but they do not see these explicitly taught in schools.

• When teachers teach EHoM through STEM and other subjects, young people become enthusiastic about engineering and their academic achievement is enhanced.

• Teachers need the right kind of support and development to make changes that enable them to embed EHoM into their teaching.

• We recommend that Government uses the thinking presented in this submission to:

      Support a wider campaign to promote the education of future engineers through the incorporation of EHoM into the school curriculum and enrichment activities.

      Support the creation of a network of multi-professional learning hubs across England to offer support to schools.

      Create a national hub to ensure the more rapid spread of effective pedagogies based on EHoM.

      Encourage the Department for Education, curriculum organisations and subject associations to support the use of key gateway subjects such as Design & Technology and Computing to enhance engagement with engineering through EHoM.

A. About the authors

1. This is a submission from Professor Bill Lucas and Dr Janet Hanson, Centre for Real-World Learning (CRL) at the University of Winchester, in collaboration with Dr David Barlex and Mr Torben Steeg, Associates of the University of Exeter.

2. CRL is an applied research centre focusing on the teaching of useful lifelong learning dispositions. It generates new thinking and tools which enable teachers to embed effective learning habits and cultivate positive mindsets in learners. CRL’s focuses on developing dispositions in two main contexts, vocational/practical education and creativity. CRL also coordinates the Expansive Education Network (eedNET), more than 300 schools and colleges whose teachers are committed to researching their own professional practice. For the last five years CRL has been supporting schools and colleges to embed engineering habits of mind into the STEM curriculum. In the 2014 REF CRL was an impact study for the university producing work rated of international and national value. CRL is supported by the Comino Foundation.

3. Dr David Barlex is an influential thought leader in Design and Technology (D&T) education in schools who, with Torben Steeg, was influential in working with the Royal Academy of Engineering in advising the government about the National Curriculum Programme of Study for D&T and the development of the new single title D&T GCSE. Recently they published the paper Re-Building D&T in response to the serious and continuing decline in the uptake of GCSE D&T since the subject was introduced into the National Curriculum. It identified the substance of four features of the subject which are essential if the subject is to reverse its decline and start, once again, to make a significant contribution to the education of the majority of young people.

B. The STEM skills that were needed but were found to be in short supply or missing

1. Although the STEM skills gap is frequently discussed in terms of a shortage of high level skills in engineering, science and high-tech industries[1], we believe that the biggest gap in engineering is the lack of knowledge and understanding about what engineers do, and how they do it in the real world.  There is a profound lack of understanding of the nature of modern engineering and the skills needed for being a successful engineer[2] [3].  This leads young people, particularly girls, to reject engineering as a career as being ‘not for them’, or because they are not ‘clever enough’[4].

2. Although this is sometimes referred to as the challenge of ‘improving the long-term pipeline’ and stemming ‘leaks’ from the pipeline in order to secure the skills required by engineering employers[5], we believe it is necessary to reframe this challenge as a learning challenge and we have been working with the Royal Academy of Engineering to address the skills gap in engineering by teaching more young people to ‘think like an engineer’[6]. We have also been working with the IMECHE to change the conversation between education and engineering to bring about more fundamental change in education for engineering[7].

3. When we asked professional engineers in a wide range of sectors about the core skills and attitudes they needed to be successful at their job, they uniformly stressed six fundamental engineering habits of mind (EHoM) as being highly significant to the successful conclusion of engineering projects. These six EHoM are systems-thinking, adapting, problem-finding, creative problem-solving, visualising, and improving (figure 1).

4. However, the engineers identified many aspects about their school experience that did not prepare them well for entering engineering, including mainly passive rather than active learning methods, lack of application of STEM subjects to the real world, lack of skills development such as communication and team-working skills, and lack of suitable adult role models[8].  In most cases their determination to become an engineer was nurtured through their family connections with the profession rather than the outcome of positive school influence.

5. We challenged this lack of connection between schools and the engineering world and proposed methods through which teachers, both at primary and secondary level, can improve young peoples’ interest in and understanding of engineering by cultivating their engineering habits of mind (EHoM).

6. We were determined to address this EHoM skills gap through the provision of a professional development programme that would convince teachers of the importance of incorporating EHoM into the school curriculum and offer them a feasible means of achieving this.

7. We collaborated with two other organizations responsible for providing professional development programmes for teachers in science and engineering, the Science & Engineering Education Research and Innovation Hub (SEERIH) at the University of Manchester and Primary Engineer. 

8. The essence of the Thinking like an Engineer initiative with the Royal Academy of Engineering is a reframing of engineering as a set of engineering habits of mind, see figure 1 below, along with a programme of supported professional development for teachers.

Figure 1 – The Centre for Real-World Learning’s Engineering Habits of Mind

9. Engineering habits of mind were introduced in three pilot programmes between 2014 and 2016 by a total of 84 teachers in 33 schools (22 primary and 11 secondary) working with more than 3000 pupils during this period.

10. We have demonstrated that it is possible for teachers to cultivate engineering habits of mind and generate enthusiasm for engineering among primary and secondary school children by using tried and tested signature pedagogies such as the engineering design cycle, an approach normally reserved for use with higher education students. By enabling children to realise that engineering products are the outcome of an iterative cycle of ideas generation, creative problem solving and a constant striving to improve on one’s original effort, pupils begin to change their mindset towards that required for ‘thinking like an engineer’. 

11. Project-based and experiential learning methods are also highly effective in developing EHoM. When teachers re-arrange the school timetable to provide time for children to tinker with materials and programmable applications such as Crumbles to build robots that play music, or foster their enthusiasm for learning about science by taking advantage of national events such as Tim Peake’s Principia Mission to design and program miniature moon buggies, they are fostering not only interest in engineering in the longer term, but also building learning through the enjoyment of a practical activity.  

12. Even if teachers make only small changes to their teaching methods within their regular science or mathematics lessons, for example, by looking on the failure of an experiment as a chance to try again and improve it or by acknowledging novel ideas that challenge their own received wisdom, they are establishing the right climate to enable engineering habits of mind to flourish in children.

13. The critical role played by professional engineers and employers must be recognised and our pilot programmes demonstrated how engineers could work effectively alongside teachers. The engineers informed the curriculum by providing projects relating to real-life engineering challenges; they acted as role models in the classroom and enabled teachers to update their knowledge about engineering and how their teaching might develop EHoM.

14. Design & Technology (D&T) is an excellent vehicle for introducing engineering related experiences and developing engineering habits of mind. At KS3 pupils have to make design decisions involving five key areas of interdependent design decision: conceptual (overall purpose of the design, the sort of product that it will be), technical (how the design will work), aesthetic (what the design will look like), constructional (how the design will be put together) and marketing (who the design is for, where it will be used, how it will be sold). The interdependence of these areas is an important feature of design decisions, as change of decision within one area will affect some if not all of design decisions that are made within the others. It is the juggling of these various decisions to arrive at a coherent design proposal that can then be realised to the point of fully working prototype that provides the act of designing and making with such intellectual rigour and educational worth and an essential part of an education which relates strongly to engineering and developing EHoM. This is made more rigorous and demanding at KS4 in the new D&T GCSE where pupils have to tackle a conceptual challenge in which they identify for themselves an issue that can be resolved through designing and making, develop their own design brief and pursue this to the completion of a manufactured solution or prototype.

15. It is worth noting that D&T can make a significant contribution to STEM through collaboration with science and mathematics as part of the normal timetable[9]. It requires teachers to ‘look sideways’ in the curriculum so that they are aware of what has already been taught in the other STEM subjects and then teach their own subject ‘in the light of STEM’, requiring pupils to use this previous learning.

16. However, STEM leaves out many subjects which are known to be of importance and interest to would-be engineers, such as art and design. A new acronym STEAM deliberately puts the arts into thinking about STEM and we found several examples where teachers blazed a trail by incorporating EHoM into English and art teaching. 

17. The cost of our support for pilot schools to engage in cultivating EHoM was ‘proof of concept’ funding provided by the Royal Academy of Engineering for CRL and SEERIH (£35,000) and by Primary Engineer directly to schools in their pilot supported in Scotland. The funding was used to provide workshops for teachers and small-scale equipment for schools. In some cases the funds covered releasing teachers to participate in the project. In addition to this overhead cost there were the costs of supply cover for those teachers who were released from teaching.

18. A significant number of engineers gave their time without charge.

19. The key elements of the programme were:

• Expert support to help teachers focus on making small changes to their teaching practice
• Professional learning sessions to support teachers sharing ideas
• Online support for teachers to contact experts and share teaching resources
• Time for professional engineers to work with teachers, children and parents.

20. Nevertheless, it is recognized that engagement in a professional learning community is acknowledged as an essential element of effective teacher professional development[10] and teachers found the networking opportunities and access to technical knowledge provided through the pilots very valuable. Therefore we recommend the creation of a network of engineering professional learning and innovation hubs. These hubs might function with reference to a number of models of professional learning and support schools in meeting standards for teachers’ professional development[11]. The work of the hubs at both national and regional level would be to enable the sustained and substantial CPD[12] required to introduce, develop and maintain approaches to teaching and learning that promoted EHoM

21. The detailed evaluation of the pilot programmes is currently in the final stages of publication by the Royal Academy of Engineering and due to be launched in March 2017[13]. In it a number of positive outcomes for learners arising from their experiences of engaging with EHoM that were noted by teachers. Children displayed increased fluency in the key engineering habits of mind, particularly in their ability to communicate their ideas, to work in teams and to persevere to improve their work. They also displayed greater curiosity, were more willing to undertake their own investigations and manage their own learning – all disposition that employers say are in short supply among school-leavers[14].

22. Introducing children to EHoM through the curriculum significantly increased their understanding of engineering and engineers.  Both girls and boys demonstrated a much deeper appreciation of the scope of engineering and a willingness to consider it as a career option.

23. The teachers also noted improvements in children’s literacy, numeracy and oracy skills and suggested that the children were able to transfer the learning gained from engineering projects to other subjects such as English and Art.

24. For the teachers themselves, using the signature pedagogies and making changes to incorporate EHoM into their teaching resulted in them gaining confidence to address new curriculum requirements, particularly in the computing curriculum.  They also realised how valuable it was to collaborate with professional engineers and, importantly, they gained experience of seeking the co-operation of engineering employers, which many of them had not been sufficiently confident to do previously.

25. Most importantly we have confirmed the potential scale-ability of the Thinking like an Engineer approach, as outlined in our Theory of Change below:

C. Recommendations for action by the Government and others which we would like the committee to consider

26. Thinking like an Engineer has demonstrated the ingredients of an effective improvement in understanding of engineering and a significant development in teacher capability. We recommend that Government recognises the value of this thinking and supports the following initiatives to scale up the approach.

27. A national campaign is now needed to promote the education of future engineers through the incorporation of EHoM into the school curriculum and school enrichment activities.

28. Having identified effective pedagogies for cultivating EHoM in schools and for engaging young people with engineering we recommend the establishment of a national hub to ensure the more rapid spread of these pedagogies, alongside a regional network of multi-professional learning hubs to support teachers locally and provide sustained and substantial professional development.

29. Key gateway subjects such as Design & Technology and Computing should be used to enhance engagement with engineering through EHoM but more work needs to be done by subject associations and curriculum organisations to promote these opportunities to teachers.  The involvement of subject associations in the work of a national hub and regional learning hubs (identified in 28) will be essential for success.

January 2017

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