382 | wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ssm School Science and Mathematics. 2019;119:382–395. © 2019 School Science and Mathematics Association 1 | INTRODUCTION The science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce is vital to the U.S. economy and national se- curity (National Research Council [NRC], 2007, 2010). However, a shortage of qualified STEM workers continues to threaten global competitiveness (Economics & Statistics Administration, 2017). Despite educational reforms respond- ing to reports related to this shortage (NRC, 2012), national and international assessments indicate that current efforts are failing to prepare students for the workplace (DeSilver, 2017; Suter & Camilli, 2019). A majority of students are underpre- pared to pursue STEM career pathways successfully, and ac- ademically capable individuals often consider career options outside of STEM (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014). Despite some gains in STEM achievement in recent years, there is still sig- nificant underrepresentation of women, minorities, and eco- nomically underserved students in STEM fields (Buchmann, 2009; National Science Foundation, 2019). Schools have been tasked with ensuring access to rigor- ous STEM education opportunities; however, educators face many challenges when preparing students for the STEM Received: 24 June 2018 | Revised: 21 March 2019 | Accepted: 22 April 2019 DOI: 10.1111/ssm.12364 RESEARCH PAPER – INTEGRATED STEM EDUCATION Supporting disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge development and design thinking in an informal, pre‐engineering program: A Workplace Simulation Project Dionne Cross Francis | Verily Tan | Celeste Nicholas Mathematics Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA Correspondence Dionne Cross Francis, Mathematics Education, Indiana University, WW Wright Education Building, 201 N Rose Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. Email: dicross@indiana.edu Funding information Indiana Department of Workforce Development, Grant/Award Number: 069261‐00002B Abstract In this paper, we examined students’ engagement in an implementation of a Workplace Simulation Project (WSP). The WSP was designed to actively engage students in learning disciplinary content by inviting engineers from industry to have a physi- cal presence within the school building to collaborate with teachers and students to complete projects which simulate the tasks authentic to their work. We focus on the first year implementation of the program that partnered a high school in the rural Midwest with an engineering unit of a government organization. Using a multiple methods study design, we analyzed disciplinary and interdisciplinary pre and posts test along with students’ interviews to determine learning gains as well as students’ interpretations of creative and critical thinking as experienced in the project and their knowledge of the engineering design process. Effect sizes showed that students in the WSP group had notable gains over the control group participants. Additionally, stu- dents’ knowledge of core elements of the design process were identified in inductive analyses of the interviews. Findings from this study will provide usable knowledge about effective ways to support systems and design thinking and ways to support expert‐novice collaboration to ensure success. KEYWORDS attitudes/beliefs, curriculum, inquiry/discovery, learning processes, curriculum development, learning processes, physics/physical science, math/math education, science/science education, algebra