Broadening participation in engineering is critical given the gap between the nation’s need for
engineering graduates and its production of them. Efforts to spark interest in engineering among
PreK-12 students have increased substantially in recent years as a result. However, past research
has demonstrated that interest is not always sufficient to help students pursue engineering
majors, particularly for rural students. In many rural communities, influential adults (family,
friends, teachers) are often the primary influence on career choice, while factors such as
community values, lack of social and cultural capital, limited course availability, and inadequate
financial resources act as potential barriers. To account for these contextual factors, this project
shifts the focus from individual students to the communities to understand how key stakeholders
and organizations support engineering as a major choice and addresses the following questions:
RQ1. What do current undergraduate engineering students who graduated from rural high
schools describe as influences on their choice to attend college and pursue engineering as
a post-secondary major?
RQ2. How does the college choice process differ for rural students who enrolled in a 4-year
university immediately after graduating from high school and those who transferred from
a 2-year institution?
RQ3. How do community members describe the resources that serve as key supports as well as
the barriers that hinder support in their community?
RQ4. What strategies do community members perceive their community should implement to
enhance their ability to support engineering as a potential career choice?
RQ5. How are these supports transferable or adaptable by other schools? What
community-level factors support or inhibit transfer and adaptation?
To answer the research questions, we employed a three-phase qualitative study. Phase 1 focused
on understanding the experiences and perceptions of current [University Name] students from
higher-producing rural schools. Analysis of focus group and interview data with 52 students
highlighted the importance of interest and support from influential adults in students’ decision to
major in engineering. One key finding from this phase was the importance of community college
for many of our participants. Transfer students who attended community college before enrolling
at [University Name] discussed the financial influences on their decision and the benefits of
higher education much more frequently than their peers. In Phase 2, we used the findings from
Phase 1 to conduct interviews within the participants’ home communities. This phase helped
triangulate students’ perceptions with the perceptions and practices of others, and, equally
importantly, allowed us to understand the goals, attitudes, and experiences of school personnel
and local community members as they work with students. Participants from the students’ home
communities indicated that there were few opportunities for students to learn more about
engineering careers and provided suggestions for how colleges and universities could be more
involved with students from their community. Phase 3, scheduled for Spring 2020, will bring the
findings from Phases 1 and 2 back to rural communities via two participatory design workshops.
These workshops, designed to share our findings and foster collaborative dialogue among the
participants, will enable us to explore factors that support or hinder transfer of findings and to
identify policies and strategies that would enhance each community’s ability to support
engineering as a potential career choice.
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Friends Are Resources Too: Examining College-Going Aspirations in Stable and Newly Established Friendships among Urban and Rural Low-Income Students
Drawing from social capital theory, this study examines the extent to which stable versus new friendship patterns affect low income students’ educational aspirations in urban and rural high schools. Using whole school sociometric data (744 high school students over a two-year period), this study applies a social influence model to determine the effects of stable and newly established friendships on conformity regarding college-going aspirations. Findings indicate that urban students have more new friends and their educational aspirations increased, conforming to those of their newly established friends. In contrast, rural students have more stable friendships than the urban students and their educational aspirations conformed to those of their stable friends. This work shows that rural students tend not to change their school network size or nominations. However, urban students are more willing to include new students in their school networks which have a positive effect on raising their educational aspirations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1661236
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10065764
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Educational Research Association
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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