I have started filming for my dissertation research. It feels like a big step forward with so much leading up to this: 13 courses, pilot study, comps, dissertation proposal, and so much reading! I will be filming 6 second grade and 6 sixth grade students (6 of them female and 6 of them male). So far, I have taped the 3 second grade boys.
Each student first performs a LEGO based warm-up task to add a roof to house without one. The walls are too far to have the available pieces span it directly.
They next build an open-ended engineering challenge, which is a safe and interesting amusement park ride, with age appropriate LEGO robotics materials.
I will then do a cross-case analysis of the engineering design process by age and gender with focus on causal reasoning.
