Our students live in a world surrounded by technologies, products of engineering design. There is a process that

is used to develop and refine technologies to meet needs or solve a problem. This is named the engineering design

 process. As a thinking process it is similar to the writing process, where in collaboration with peers and

teachers students revise and refine their work through testing (work is read), evaluation (editing) and revision.

The engineering design processes is cyclical, and is a learning process that uses creative and critical

thinking skills to design technologies to solve a problem or fill a need. Ideas are generated that are

responsive to the problem statement. One example is that in this process, it may be learned that the problem begin

solved is not the right problem. So you go back to requirements. Another example could be that a prototype is

developed, and at that point it is clear that the conceptual design is wrong. So the process returns to the

design phase again.

For teachers as facilitators of learning, the engineering challenges are used as a generator of questions. 

The engineering design process is a great place to create “structured controversy” in student discourse, with

the teacher modeling questions with more than one right answer.

Questions, evaluation, reflection and creativity are at the heart of the process. In each step, engineers evaluate

what they are doing and communicate in drawings and words as well as in discussions, their ideas. These are