Thesis
Engineering students' word choice acting as a realization of conceptual understanding
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
2014
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/101283
Abstract
Language has been studied extensively as a means to measure conceptual understanding in the science education field, but is lacking in regards to engineering education. Kittleson and Southerland (2004) and Kelly (2012) published research studies that focused and found ties between language and conceptual understanding specific to engineering education. Yet, the research studies were narrow in focus and demanded further research to be conducted in various contexts, engineering disciplines, and communication mediums to validate their research results. This study utilized past research methods, including the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework, to measure conceptual understanding by giving attention to language, more specifically word choice, in an interview setting. The words used among the participants when discussing a structural engineering problem provided insight into the similarities and differences among cohorts. Along with the word choice analysis, conceptual understanding was measured by the creation of a standardized rubric to quantify students' completeness, correctness, relatedness, and realisticness throughout the interview. Finally, the results of the two analyses were compared to discuss connections between word choice and conceptual understanding. The research results proved to support that language and conceptual understanding are connected and also created unique findings focused on structural engineering that are valuable to engineering education.
Metrics
2 File views/ downloads
13 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Engineering students' word choice acting as a realization of conceptual understanding
- Creators
- Brent Lane Olson
- Contributors
- Devlin B. Montfort (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525145501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis