Teaching Strategies Promoting Student Informed Decision-Making During Technological and Engineering Design

Abstract

The advancement of technology has shifted the skill sets needed to thrive in today's world. Jobs involving repetitive tasks have largely been replaced by automation, while those requiring informed decision-making on complex issues remain irreplaceable (P21, 2015a; WEF, 2023). This shift highlights the growing importance of higher-order cognitive skills. Education, as the foundation for workforce preparation, must equip students with these future-ready skills, necessitating changes in classroom teaching approaches. This research aims to identify a set of teaching strategies that help students make informed decisions during the technological and engineering design process. An exploratory mixed-method research design, specifically the Delphi method, was employed. The Delphi method involves multiple rounds of questionnaires sent to participants. The study recruited 35 teachers from the USA, Republic of Korea, and Taiwan in Round 1 who use the engineering design process when teaching middle and/or high school Technology Education (TE), Technology and Engineering Education (TEE), or Design and Technology Education (DTE). In Round 1 of the study, participants were asked to provide teaching strategies they use to intentionally promote informed decision-making during students engage in the technological/engineering design process. Thematic analysis of Round 1 data was conducted to identify teaching strategies and grouped similar teaching strategies together. There were 80 teaching strategies identified in Round 1. In Round 2, participants were asked to rate their level of agreement regarding the usefulness of 80 teaching strategies in promoting student informed decision making. The interquartile range (IQR) and the median were used to determine consensus. Of these 80 strategies, 53 reached consensus in Round 2. The strategies that did not reach consensus were included in the Round 3 questionnaire, where participants were presented with the group median and the reasoning provided by others as a form of passive persuasion. An additional 10 strategies reached consensus in Round 3. All of the strategies that reached consensus emphasize authentic and experiential learning, support iterative design and evaluation cycles, integrate decision-making tools such as rubrics and decision matrices, foster collaborative learning through peer feedback and discussion, and provide scaffolding to build students' decision-making competencies over time. Each strategy is associated with a specific phase of the design process for implementation. These findings offer valuable guidance for supporting students in making informed decisions within technological and engineering classrooms.