David Radcliffe (pictured above) has recently been appointed director of the future STEM Research Innovation Centre at Swinburne University, bringing a unique US perspective of STEM education.
Radcliffe, an engineering education researcher, comes to Swinburne from Purdue University in the US, where he was Kamyar Haghighi head of the School of Engineering Education for seven years and a foundation Epistemology Professor of Engineering Education.
Purdue’s unique approach to engineering education means the department, which was formed in 2004, sits within the faculty of engineering.
One aim of the department is for academic staff to conduct research in education from kindergarten through to professional development, with a view to transforming engineering education across the whole lifecycle on the basis of research and scholarship, not just “guesswork.”
While there are several organisations around the world carrying out innovation in education around engineering and other STEM disciplines, Radcliffe said it was the focus on research on education that inspired innovation at Purdue.
“The point about what was going on at Purdue and the fact that this school of engineering education existed was that we were quite explicitly drawing on educational knowledge and contributing to that because the research of all the academic staff was around some aspect of education, then translating that research into practice,” he said.
“For example, we completely changed the engineering subjects in the first year to engage all 2,500 students in structured teams of four across two whole semesters in a ‘flipped’ learning environment where all the content was studied online ahead of class, at which the student teams worked on projects and other activities to apply the online material.”
While it has been known for 30 years that such an active, collaborative mode of education is more effective than traditional teaching methods, it has not been successfully applied in engineering on such a scale before, according to Radcliffe.
“[We also] introduced a range of concepts such as user-centered design based on design thinking, mathematical modelling to support decision making and other professional ‘habits of mind,’ including the importance of diversity in engineering.”
Radcliffe said this relates to a virtuous cycle of research and innovative practice, which prompts questions, such as “Why isn’t the engineering classroom representative of the broader community?” and “Why are certain groups not represented?”
These questions then motivate research, which can lead to a cycle of new insights and new practice.
“The whole point was that this was a place that did both the research and the innovation in this virtuous cycle of questions arising from teaching practice, leading to research and thus improved practices,” Radcliffe said.
One thing Australian academics could learn from this is becoming more aware of how people learn and applying that knowledge in the classroom.
“You can be a teacher who just teaches like you were taught. You can be an effective teacher. You can go to workshops and learn better techniques,” he said.
“Then you get to a level where you’re really a scholarly teacher who’s engaged in understanding the research. They’re even doing some, if not original research, deeper analysis of what’s going on.”
Switch STEM back on
Radcliffe said STEM education starts from the earliest childhood, which is when some children may turn off math and science.
“Worldwide, the research points to grade three at primary school [when they turn off], and there’s a lot of reasons why that happens,” he said.
“It’s about rethinking how we introduce engineering to communities, to families and to students very early on.”
Radcliffe said currently there is a habit of telling children who are good at math and science to do engineering, with engineering seen as just a technical field.
While there is some truth in that, Radcliffe said children should instead be asked questions such as, “Do you want to make a difference in the world?” and “Do you want to shape the future?”
“You engage younger people around making a positive difference in where we are going to get our water, our energy, our food, our shelter and how are we going to deal with urbanization that’s going on globally,” Radcliffe said.
“Then from that, having engaged them in the possibility of what they could do if they were to consider engineering ... then you’re in a conversation about the end point, about the aspiration. You can then start to talk about the math and perhaps they will be interested in pursuing the math a little further because they can see the end point.”
This type of engagement can flip the engineering conversation from one about science and math to getting people to understand what engineering really is.
“Engineering education, for me, isn’t about what happens in four years at university in an engineering degree, or indeed in a science degree or math,” Radcliffe said.
“It’s about thinking about all aspects of learning, formal and informal, from the earliest childhood, from playing in the sandpit, from going to a museum, all the way through to developing deep engineering expertise or mathematical proficiency and doing some very complex project in a technical career.”
In his new role at Swinburne, Radcliffe is hoping to focus energy and effort around changing this view about STEM education within the community.
“All citizens really should be able to be part of that conversation, not feel that somehow some technocrats are making the decisions,” he said.
“It’s allowing people to understand and demystify some of the elements behind the science and the technology and the engineering and the math, so that the society that we shape is informed by a citizenry that’s able to participate in those conversations.”