A gifted and talented middle school material science investigation: utilizing engineering practices to develop sustainable and benign particleboard

Gifted learners are often intellectually curious and require meaningful learning opportunities. This engineering investigtion fosters curiosity while also generating useable knowledge that connects to global issues through a STEM lens. This engineering exercise presents a valuable experience for gifted learners because it not only fosters creativity and is environmentally relevant, but it also compels students to develop and practice academic competencies. This investigation is designed to harness most gifted learners’ strong sense of empathy and heightened sense of justice to spawn useable knowledge that can help inform decisions and actions today and in the future. Specifically, the investigation will have gifted students determine if cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) are suitable as a non-toxic, environmentally benign adhesive for the construction of particleboard. Students become heavily invested in the project when they know they are working towards a more sustainable and safe product. In this study, the case study method was used. The project work conducted with middle school gifted students was handled as a case study, focusing on the process and outcomes. Students are able to meet many of the Next Generation of Science Standards (NGSS) enginerring performace expectations, complete aspects of all of the science and engineering practices, explore several engineering disciplinary core ideas, and consider several crosscutting concepts. This project can be fine-tuned to best meet the needs of any gifted student. This investigative approach incorporates science and engineering practices and encourages students to combine their previous and new science content knowledge with procedural knowledge in relevant ways. Gifted students gain valuable STEM experiences and use novel science equipment to solve a real world problem. This activity exercises students’ executive functions for problem solving, organizing, and develops skills including the ability to interpret data and draw pertinent conclusions. The next step in this research is to use pre and post student surveys to quantitatively show the impact of this engineering investigation on improving science and engineering practices, attitudes, content knowledge, and to see how it may influence authentic STEM research projects.