Assessing the Development of Students’ Engineering Thinking in Chemistry Class

Abstract

The article analyzes the components of engineering thinking in school students and discusses general approaches to assessing its development in chemistry class. Engineering thinking is defined as a complex of intellectual processes and their results that enable problem solving in engineering. To determine approaches to developing the content of assignments, the following components of engineering thinking can be identified: technical, constructive, research, critical, imaginative, and economic thinking. Three main areas to assess engineering thinking components have been identified: solving qualitative and quantitative technical problems to demonstrate the practical significance of Chemistry, its role in the development of science, and its connections with other scientific branches; developing algorithms, creating logic block diagrams arranging key concepts, signs, and symbols in a specific logical sequence, and creating mind maps showing a problem from different perspectives to develop a new optimal solution; exploring case-based assignments that involve solving practice-oriented situations within the students’ future profession framework. The article provides examples of chemistry-related assignments for various types of engineering classes and students of different ages. These assignments contain subject-specific material and involve a number of logical steps to establish cause-and-effect relationships. Some tasks are designed to test students’ ability to develop solution algorithms, to transform information from one symbolic form to another, to create diagrams and graphs based on the given data, to critically evaluate information, and to identify errors or misinformation in the conditions of a problem.