Diversiteit in de instroom

1e bach: zegen of

vloek?

W. Dehaene – Hapje Onderwijs – 17/12/12

Introducing myself� prof. dr. ir. Wim Dehaene

� wim.dehaene@esat.kuleuven.be

� KULeuven,groep W&T, dept. Elektrotechniek-ESAT, afdeling MICAS

� Research domain: digital integrated circuit design “chips”

� “Onderwijsopdracht”• P en O

• Digitale geïntegreerde schakelingen

• Vakdidactiek Techniek-informatica

• Elektrische netwerken 1e bach ir

Aspects of diversity

• ‘Diverse’ in the oxford english dictionary

• Which aspects of diversity/variety are we going to look at?

o Gender

o Motivation: why people study STEM

o Knowledge & skills

• STEM = Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics

adjective

showing a great deal of variety; very different:

a culturally diverse population subjects as

diverse as architecture, language teaching,

and the physical sciences

Returning questions

• How much and what kind of diversity is useful in

1e bach ir?

The more the merrier?

• Can the diversity of the inflow positively be influenced?

How?

Gender

• Diversity is small

o # boys >> # girls

o In all ‘ir’ and ‘ing’ curricula except architects.

• Do we need to tackle this?

o Lack of gender mix is emotionally poorer

o Lack of engineers can anyhow not be mitigated by addressing the remainder of potential engineers in the male population

o So, yes 4

• Root cause?

The keyword is relevance

• Reference publication in this domain

The ROSE project: Relevance Of Science Education

o http://Roseproject.no

Sjoberg, Schreiner, “The Rose project: An overview and

key findings”

o International study on the affective dimensions on how

young learners relate to science and technology

o Some excerpts 0

Typical school context

Pure technical context

Social, health care, biomedical context

Contradiction in perception mainly for girls (I)

Girls are

motivated to

tackle social

issues !

Contradiction in perception mainly for girls (II)

But they

don’t see the

link with S&T

Contradiction in perception mainly for girls (III)

And thus they don’t

opt for an S&T carreer

At least the boys still

want to be engineers!

Conclusion from this

• We have to address the social relevance of S&T and make it

clear to our young people before they enter the higher

education system today

• This needs to be tackled in secondary and primary education

• This can only be done if STEM is brought in an integrated

way in our classrooms en schools

1

Diversity in motivation to study STEM

• Why would somebody want to study something in STEM

o Let’s make a list

• Social relevance � hampered see before

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•

•

•

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•

School education as a motivation for STEM (I)

• Some curricula in Flemish secondary education are labeled STEM

o Wiskunde wetenschappen (ASO)

o Latijn wiskunde

o 4

But they contain mainly a lot of Mathematics, a little bit of Science and no technology or engineering

• In TSO there are some very good options for STEM but they are hardly choosen

o Industriele wetenschappen (ideal prep. for engineering)

o Techniek wetenschappen (ideal prep. for prof. bachelor)

But there are very few pupils choosing this

School education as a motivation for STEM (II)

• Secondary education thus mainly exposes pupils to math, pure math

• Pupils don’t see what the relation is with Science, let alone engineering

• It looks like we mainly attract students to STEM because ‘they are good math’

• Would it not be worthwhile to also try to attract youngsters that have a passion for physics, mechanics or electronics or 0 and tell them they’ll need some math?

School education as a motivation for STEM (III)

• Would it not be worthwhile to also try to attract youngsters

that have a passion for physics, mechanics or electronics

or 0 and tell them they’ll need some math?

• If we want to do that we’ll have to show them howscience

and mathematics with engineering as the hyphen between

them interact to solve technical problems

• We will have to bring integrated STEM to the education

system

2

• Looks like we want a lot of diversity0

• Let’s have a look a the prerequisites for knowledge and

skills

• How much diversity do we want there?

• Let’s have a look at mathematics

Open question

• Is the knowledge of particular math topics important?

• If something is missing after secondary school, we can

teach it. Examples are

o Complex numbers

o Logarithms

o Fourier analysis

o Determinants

An example from ‘Elektrische netwerken’

• Transfer functions

o Describe the linear behavior of a network

o Rational polynomials, fully determined by zeros of

numerator and denominator

o What follows comes from the course

• Transfer functions

• Logarithms are essential for this

The actual question

• How much conceptual novelty can a 1e bach student

handle in one course?

• Can they acquire the math of logarithms and transfer

functions as a concept in the same move?

• We think there is a minimum of

o Mathematical knowledge � 6 hours SO mathematics

o Mathematical skills required � “Combinatievragen”

Combinatievraag

• This is perceived as difficult because it more than

just application of a single known recipe

• Combination skills are essential for engineering 0

To much diversity in starting level is a problem

• If the knowledge/skills in math are too diverse in the

beginning

o Very difficult to find right level of teaching

o The level reached at the end of 1e bach is pressurized

o Too many students of which ‘we could have known’ fail

o We used to have an entrance exam that could impose

minimum norms but that was abolished

Ijkingstoets

• Starting from next academic year (we had a pilot this year) we offer the “ijkingstoets”

• Optional multiple choice exam offered to all secondary school pupils that consider STEM studies with a considerable amount of mathematics

• The test will “calibrate” their level of mathematics knowledge and skills relative to what is required for different STEM options

• At FIRW we will reward the students who take the ‘ijkingstoets’ by granting an EVK for a part of a course.

• This is maybe a good topic for another “hapje onderwijs”

• Open question: relation between ‘ijkingstoets’ and the gender problem

Conclusion

• Diversity in inflow is a blessing when it comes to having students with different background, gender, motivation, 4

• We should influence these aspects of diversity in secondary education by bringing integrated STEM � work in progress

• Diversity is a problem if that means that th level of mathematics the inflowing students have is too low.

• The “ijkingstoets” will be a good instrument to advise students that don’t have the necessary prerequisites to do something about it.