This paper presents the results of a 2-year longitudinal study aimed at characterizing and comparing the design cognition of high school students with and without formal engineering design experiences. The students—working as dyads—engaged in design-only sessions generating solutions in response to the same engineering design challenges. The design sessions were video and audio recorded, transcribed, then segmented and coded using the Function–Behavior–Structure ontologically-based design issues and design processes coding scheme. Both the design issues and design processes were described and compared between the two high school student groups. The results of this study revealed significant differences in design issues, processes, and the cognitive effort in their problem/solution spaces between the two high school student groups when the design sessions were partitioned in two and three equal contiguous fractions. The paper concludes with a discussion regarding the significance of the differences found in this study and their pedagogical implications.

本文介绍了一项为期两年的纵向研究的结果，旨在表征和比较具有和没有正式工程设计经验的高中学生的设计认知。这些学生作为二元组参加了仅设计课程，以产生解决方案来应对相同的工程设计挑战。使用基于行为-结构-本体论的设计问题和设计过程编码方案，记录，转录，分段和编码设计会议，包括视频和音频。描述了设计问题和设计过程，并在两个高中学生群体之间进行了比较。这项研究的结果表明，设计问题，流程，当设计会议分为两个和三个相等的连续部分时，在两个高中学生群体之间的问题/解决空间中的认知努力。本文最后讨论了这项研究中发现的差异的重要性及其教学意义。