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This paper aims to explore the objectives and methods of teaching engineering and technology education (ETE) through the lens of three educational taxonomies in cognitive, knowledge and problem-solving perspectives. This analysis is useful in light of today's increasing interest in teaching engineering and technology in K-12 education, instead of crafts or manual skills.

This is an exploratory study. Technology and engineering education is a relatively new area in K-12 education, and little has been written about the use of general educational taxonomies for analysing and designing the teaching and learning of this subject.

The literature analysis teaches us that fostering students' higher-order capabilities such as design and problem solving in engineering and technology cannot take place in isolation from specific knowledge. Instruction should be designed to: develop a certain degree of factual, procedural, conceptual and meta-cognitive knowledge in relevant areas of technology, science and mathematics; and engage learners in assignments of increasing cognitive levels, from simple to complex ones.

This work is original and valuable in that it explores ETE through tools often used in the educational literature and research, rather than regarding technology education as an exceptional school subject. This could encourage making engineering and technology a core component in the overall curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to improve students’ problem-solving skills in civil engineering and construction management education.

The design includes structured role-playing as a pedagogical method in 21 project teams with a total of 82 undergraduate students at Chang’an University, China, in a nine-week Building Information Modeling (BIM) capstone course. The methodology is a teaching–learning experiment in a civil engineering education program with a detailed description of the empirical case and assessment instruments. The approach is to train project execution planning in a capstone course by role-playing with a real-world project using the procedures of the BIM Project Execution Planning Guide (PEPG) and process mapping.

The study finds that students can significantly improve their problem-solving skills through planning and role-specific communication during projects.

The research sample needs to be expanded from senior-level undergraduate students to consider the different backgrounds and motivations of students.

This pedagogy is helpful to educators who are interested in group learning with a real-world project; the procedures of BIM PEPG; self-chosen responsibilities within a capstone course time framework; raising the awareness of the importance of planning; information exchange; and team cooperation.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how role-playing in information and technology rich environments can be structured.

Challenge-based learning (CBL) has gained acceptance as a contemporary and progressive teaching pedagogy that provides a holistic and inclusive experience to learners in higher education (HE) institutions. However, its lack of appeal to non-STEM subjects and the need for further development, particularly concerning improved approaches, have been recognized. It seems that CBL runs the risk of becoming a portmanteau pedagogy that blends aspects of problem-based learning, project-based learning, and situated learning, as opposed to its development as an effective pedagogy tool. This points to a lack of a formal implementation framework, code of practice, and standard procedures for its delivery. We argue that blending a design thinking (DT) pedagogy with CBL can potentially provide the stability that CBL currently lacks. At the same time, it also presents a more inclusive proposition to potential non-STEM audiences. Thus, in this chapter, we seek to interrogate the intersectionality between CBL and DT literature in the context of HE teaching and learning with a view of establishing CBL as a pedagogy in its own right. We attempt to achieve this by systematically analyzing the separate literature to reveal the synergies and common touchpoints.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy. It provides an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts. The selected bibliography is useful to efficiently keep up with trends in library instruction for busy practitioners, library science students and those wishing to learn about information literacy in other contexts.

This article annotates 424 English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, theses and reports on library instruction and information literacy published in 2021. The sources were selected from the EBSCO platform for Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and WorldCat, published in 2021 that included the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction,” or “information fluency” in the title, abstract or keywords. The sources were organized in Zotero. Annotations summarize the source, focusing on the findings or implications. Each source was categorized into one of seven pre-determined categories: K-12 Education, Children and Adolescents; Academic and Professional Programs; Everyday Life, Community, and the Workplace; Libraries and Health Information Literacy; Multiple Library Types; and Other Information Literacy Research and Theory.

The paper provides a brief description of 424 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy within 2021.

This chapter reports on the design-based research study aimed at the re- and codesign of the third-year course “Introduction to Biostatistics,” part of the Bachelor program in Medicine. The authors aimed to make teaching more interactive, student-based and future-proof by empirically testing theoretical assumptions during iterative studies, including both quantitative and qualitative results from the perspective of the students and the teacher. The authors’ conclusion is that teacher–researcher collaboration can be an effective approach for professional development and improving innovative practices. At the same time, it allows to get a better theoretical understanding of effective teaching and learning practices. The authors hope that this chapter can inspire others to transform toward a progressive institution and looking for concrete innovative classroom practices in the context of innovative learning spaces.

While deficits for students with learning disabilities (LD) are prevalent in almost all aspects of mathematics, difficulty in the application and understanding of problem-solving tasks are much more challenging to remediate than computational and procedural skills. Given the complexities involved in authentic problem-solving activities emphasized in current mathematics standards and the inherent challenges presented to students with LD, the importance of using strategies and techniques guided by evidence-based practices is paramount. Yet, ineffective instructional strategies for problem solving are still widespread in both mathematics curricula and available teacher resources. In this chapter, we provide a description of a commonly used ineffective problem-solving strategy (i.e., the keyword strategy), an overview of the keyword research, and an explanation for its ineffectiveness. We conclude with a description of three evidenced-based problem-solving approaches and practices that significantly improve the mathematical performance of students with LD.

Problem solving skills (PSS), an important component of learning outcomes, is one of the desirable skills in engineering graduates as stated by many employers, researchers and government bodies in India for a strong foothold in professional world. There is a need to develop comprehensive understanding and integration of theory (concept) and practice (process) of PSS in the context of experiential learning (EL).

The present study is qualitative in nature using a conceptual research design focussing on synthesis and model building framework. The key elements of the study are PSS, EL and their integration. The study seeks to develop conceptual integration of PSS across multiple theories and perspectives. It offers an enhanced view of a concept of PSS by summarising and integrating extant knowledge. It presents the complete and comprehensive meaning/definition of PSS. Subsequently, it also explores EL and synthesises the different variants of EL that can be used to develop PSS. Finally, the study builds a theoretical framework that proposes integration and interplay between PSS and EL.

Problem-solving operates at three levels: problem concept (nature and context), process (stages with strategies) and solution (open-ended). EL can be used as a tool to develop PSS in an integrated manner. It is found that EL and problem-solving interplay with each other as both are cyclic in nature and have commonalities strengthening each other.

The proposed framework can be adopted in engineering education for making the engineering graduates job ready.

The study proposes a framework based on integration of EL and problem-solving focusing on specific aims and goals of the course, learning approaches, learning strategies and authentic learning (learning environment). This integration would bridge the gap between engineering education and industry requirements. EL integrated problem-solving focus on pedagogical knowledge (knowing how to facilitate discussion among learners and curricular knowledge) and instructional knowledge (knowing how to introduce, organise different methods and assess).

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of problem‐solving tasks on mentoring received, peer mentoring and mentoring provided.

This cross‐sectional survey was based on a questionnaire that was sent to a total of 435 employees from 29 pre‐schools in Norway. A total of 284 responses were returned, a response rate of 65.3 per cent. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to assess the validity and reliability of measurement scales. Research questions were formulated. Stepwise regression analysis was recommended to assess the magnitude and direction of the independent variable on the three dependent variables, when controlled for by demographic and career variables.

The results revealed that problem‐solving tasks have a positive and significant influence on mentoring received, peer mentoring and mentoring provided. This means that performing unfamiliar tasks increases the occurrence of the three mentoring roles.

The independent variables only explained 14 per cent, 30 per cent and 38 per cent of mentoring received, peer‐mentoring and mentoring provided, respectively. Thus, other job characteristics, for example specialization, need further investigation to uncover the influence of job characteristics on mentoring.

Problem‐solving tasks will be a challenge for educational leadership to coordinate the mentoring roles according to the changing nature of work in pre‐schools.

There is no previous research that investigates how job characteristics in general and problem‐solving tasks in particular influence the occurrence of mentoring relationships.

This study compared the results of self-report and ability-based tests of problem-solving abilities of 144 hospitality managers working at hotels and restaurants through an online survey. In the first stage of the study, the managers were asked to fill in the self-report problem-solving ability scale by Tesone et al. (2010). In the second stage of the study, the managers were asked to respond to questions in a case-study-based problem-solving test.

Problem-solving is a key aspect of business process management. This study aims to investigate and compare hospitality managers' actual and claimed (self-report) problem-solving abilities. A lack of unawareness of the actual level of skills may be an important problem as managers who tend to have inflated self-efficacy beliefs are less likely to allocate resources, e.g. time, money and effort, to develop a particular skill or ability they lack. They are also more likely to take risks regarding that skill or ability.

The results of the study showed that there was a major difference between the results of the self-report test and the actual test. This meant that the managers who participated in the study had inflated self-efficacy beliefs regarding their problem-solving abilities, i.e. they operated under the influence of the Dunning–Kruger effect. The study showed that self-report tests that are commonly used in businesses in recruitment and promotion may not provide a correct level of people's abilities. In general, managers who have inflated self-efficacy beliefs are less likely to be interested in developing a particular skill due to the overconfidence arising from their inflated self-efficacy beliefs. The study showed that managers were less likely to allocate resources, e.g. time, money and effort, to develop a particular skill they lack and are more likely to take risks regarding that particular skill.

Managers in the hospitality industry appear to lack problem solving-abilities. While the hospitality managers assigned high marks for their problem-solving abilities in a self-report problem-solving scale and appeared to be performing significantly good overall in problem-solving, they performed poorly in an actual problem solving exercise. It is recommended that businesses rather than depending on self-report problem-solving scales, they should resort to ability-based scales or exercises that actually measure managers' problem-solving abilities. Also, as managers who had formal tourism and hospitality education performed poorly, tourism and hospitality programme managers at universities are recommend to review their syllabi and curriculum so as to help support their graduates' problem-solving abilities.

The study is original as no previous study compared managers' problem-solving abilities by using self-report and ability-based tests. The study has implications for researchers in terms of developing knowledge, ability and skill-based scales in the future. The study has also significant practical implications for the practitioners.

This study explored students' experiences of creative problem-solving using a design thinking approach in higher education, mainly focusing on the importance of empathetic approach in the problem identification and definition phase.

The authors used a descriptive qualitative research design and thematic analysis, in which observation and 27 semi-structured reports were used to reveal the impact of design thinking on undergraduate students' experience of creative problem-solving.

The authors found multiple themes in students' responses concerning problem identification and definition in design thinking, which could be described as a systematic innovation process. Four major themes were identified. They included identifying and defining problems in a real-world context, empathizing with people from the target beneficiary group as a process of problem identification and definition, working with a team to expand the empathizing view, and perceiving the need for deep exploration in the empathetic process and defining a problem.

This study examined the perceived role of empathy in students' creative problem-solving process. However, the main limitation of this study was the small sample size, which can limit the generalizability of the results of the study. Nonetheless, this study provides valuable insights into understanding the role of empathy and problem identification as an essential process in creative problem-solving.

It is worthwhile to integrate design thinking as an effective teaching and learning strategy in university education, particularly for fostering empathy and creative problem-solving skills in students. Among the processes of design thinking, empathy is critical in the problem identification and definition phase.

This study adds to existing knowledge by examining the role and ways of perceiving real-world problems in a human-centered mindset in university programs.