Playful experimentation creates engineers, report says

Schools that have adapted their teaching to encourage students to develop ‘engineering habits of mind’ boosts pupil achievements, according to a new report

The report, ‘Learning to be an Engineer’, was published by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the University of Winchester’s Centre for Real-World Learning. It found that playful experimentation, shows that learning from failure and school engagement with professional engineers helps to raise the achievement and aspirations not just in science and maths, but in pupils’ communication skills, artistic ability and confidence to engage in class discussions.

One programme in the pilot – Tinker Tailor Robot Pi – explored how engineering could be incorporated into the primary school curriculum through science, design and technology and computing – including through ‘tinkering’ with readily available materials to make and improve models.

The pilot programmes encouraged students to make mistakes and learn from them. Some learners struggled to return to a failed project and try again and some teachers initially struggled with stepping back and allowing children to make mistakes. However, over the course of the programme, which ran from late 2014 to 2016, the process improved the learners’ ability to tackle open-ended questions and generate creative solutions to problems. It also helped teachers to become more open to learners’ ideas and to develop their own growth mind-set.

The three pilot schemes took place in southern England, Greater Manchester, and Glasgow and East Ayrshire. Some 22 primary schools, 11 secondary schools and one further education college took part in the research programme, involving 84 teachers and more than 3,000 pupils.

The results in the report describe ways in which curricula based on engineering habits of mind have boosted their pupils’ achievement and also enhanced the teachers’ confidence to engage with the engineering profession.

The report explains that engineering habits of mind can be embedded across a wide range of subjects appropriate to different schools’ specialisms and local contexts, and identifies an urgent need for professional support for teachers wishing to adopt this approach.