Students' misunderstandings and misconceptions in engineering thinking

It is well established that students' misunderstandings and misconceptions frequently impede learning processes and frustrate their best efforts. Little is known about how they relate to engineering thinking. We claim that some learning difficulties are common to several engineering disciplines. The aim of the study presented in this paper is to answer the question: What engineering-thinking misunderstandings and misconceptions are typical of students in the areas of electronics, mechanical and software engineering? Based on analysis of interviews with experienced lecturers, this paper presents three levels of students' engineering-thinking misunderstandings, according to their generality. The first level relates to misunderstandings of specific content learned in a concrete engineering discipline; the second level deals with more general students' problems in interpreting and integrating knowledge, which they typically make in several engineering disciplines; and the third level describes misunderstandings characteristic of students in most engineering disciplines. In addition, we discuss the match between the misunderstandings of students studying engineering disciplines and the system of categories, which characterizes engineering thinking.