P-12 Engineering and Design Education Research Summit

P-12 engineering is gaining increasing interest nationally; one example is the recent publication Engineering in K-12 Education from the National Academies. Massachusetts was the first state to include engineering in its’ Curriculum Frameworks and Indiana’s the new state science standards out for review include engineering design beginning in kindergarten. Efforts at the Boston Museum of Science’s National Center for Technology Literacy http://www.mos.org/NCTL/k12.php and ASEE’s eGFI http://teachers.egfi-k12.org/ focus on the P-12 classroom.

Purdue University’s Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning (INSPIRE) invites researchers, teachers, policy makers, and engineers to submit proposals for a summit on August 11-13, 2010. Our theme is “Preschool-12 Capacity Building through Community of Practice.” The summit is designed to be a “catalyst for combining scientific argumentation and collaboration that would enhance research in Preschool-12 engineering education.” The interdisciplinary approach will link research, teaching, policy, and engineering practice.