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.