by TaranRampersad

The justification for developing standards for engineering education rests on a foundation that includes both societal and educational looking first at history, in particular the 20 perspectives I begin with the societal perspective by tury. One stunning example supports the case for engineering education standards. In late 1999, the Newseum, a journalism museum then located in Virginia, conducted a survey of American historians and journalists to determine the top 100 news stories of the 20th century. As I read the list, I was surprised that of the top 100 headlines, more than 40 percent were directly related to engineering and technology. This ranking of news stories seems to justify increasing the emphasis on engineering education and technological literacy, because they reflect what the public reads, hears, and values.

The high percentage of engineering-related news events is rivaled only by political events, many of which also indirectly involved engineering. Table 2 lists the engineering-related events (modified to include only stories with a direct component of engineering or technology). Each selection in Table 2 meets one of these criteria: (I) the story clearly is about engineering technology; (2) the story has clear connections to engineering technology; or (3) the story forecasts a future application for engineering technology. As an interesting aside, in completing this analysis, I realized that nearly all of the headlines had some connection to engineering technology. Although some might debate particular selections, it would be difficult to argue with the general conclusion that a significant percentage of important events in the 20th century were clearly and directly related to engineering technology.

In the early years of the 2 10 century, I see no reason to predict fewer of those stories, and I think more. The justification for promoting engineering and it reasonable to suggest that there will be I technology education seems clear. To the historical justification, one can add contemporary challenges that include the role of engineering and innovation in economic recovery, the efficient use of energy resources, the mitigation of risks from climate change, the creation of green jobs, the reduction in health care costs, an increase in healthy life styles, improving defense, and the development of new technologies for national security. Turning to educational justifications for standards for K-12 engineering education, I would first note the need for a widely accepted national statement of the goals and purposes of engineering education. I realize that individual curricula have goals. We can, for example, cite the historical goal of technological literacy from the 1970s Engineering Concepts Curriculum Project.

Contemporary engineering curricula have similar goals (NAE, 2009). Nevertheless, I still believe we need a “widely accepted national statement” of the goals, purposes, and policies of engineering education. STEM is a popular acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. We have national standards for science (NRC, 1996), technology (ITEA, 2000), and mathematics (NCTM, 2000), but not for engineering education. I rest my case. Finally, we are in an era of standards-based reform. To be recognized and accepted in education today, a discipline or area of study needs a set of standards. Learning things is not limited to the scentific area. Instead it also has relations with some other things like speaking a language or using software, including Rosetta Stone Japanese and Rosetta Stone Korean. If you have a creative mind, you will make all your own differences in the end!

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