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1. “Maybe If I Put My Mind To It": 5th Graders’ Receptivity to Pursuing Engineering Careers (Fundamental)

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--31924  

   Miel, Karen; Portsmore, Merredith; Fuller, Emily; Paul, Kelli; Sung, Euisuk; Maltese, Adam (June 2019, ASEE Conferences)

   As educators strive to broaden representation in engineering, it is important to take into account how youth perceive themselves in relation to engineering careers. Youth as young as ten years of age are assessing the appeal and achievability of engineering as a career. This study explores preadolescents’ perceptions of the desirability of engineering careers and the self-assessed characteristics which impact students’ interest in engineering. In particular, this work unpacks what attracts elementary students to engineering careers and what these students believe it takes to be an engineer. Drawing from a set of 56 student interviews, this work addresses the research question In what ways are elementary school students thinking about careers in engineering? Existing research indicates that students’ interest in engineering careers declines as students enter middle school; this study contributes to understanding influences on students’ interests when they are on the cusp of deciding whether to pursue engineering study and careers. As part of a study of a university-led engineering education outreach program in elementary classrooms, 5th grade students participated in 15- to 30-minute semi-structured interviews near the end of the academic year. Participants represented four classrooms in two suburban schools in the northeastern United States that had each engaged in 16-18 weeks of hands-on engineering activities led by undergraduate engineering students. Interviews focused on the students’ experiences with engineering and the engineering intervention, students’ role models, and students’ career aspirations. We utilized open coding to analyze the interviews and identified the keywords and themes that students used to describe why an engineering career would be appealing or unappealing and possible or impossible for them. Two themes characterized the interview data; these students’ receptivity to pursuing engineering careers appeared to be mediated by conceptions of engineering careers as involving skill (in idea generation or in creation of technology) or desire (the will to do engineering). This paper utilizes interview data to attend to students’ perspectives and expand our understanding of barriers and gateways to student interest in engineering study and careers. It also discusses the implications of the findings for teaching engineering with an eye on the messages conveyed about the nature of engineering practices, the characteristics of engineers, and how students’ interests intersect with engineering careers. 

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2. Transformations in Elementary Teachers' Pedagogical Reasoning: Studying Teacher Learning in an Online Graduate Program in Engineering Education

   Watkins, Jessica; Portsmore, Merredith; Swanson, Rebecca (January 2019, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This research paper describes a study of elementary teacher learning in an online graduate program in engineering education for in-service teachers. While the existing research on teachers in engineering focuses on their disciplinary understandings and beliefs (Hsu, Cardella, & Purzer, 2011; Martin, et al., 2015; Nadelson, et al., 2015; Van Haneghan, et al., 2015), there is increasing attention to teachers' pedagogy in engineering (Capobianco, Delisi, & Radloff, 2018). In our work, we study teachers' pedagogical sense-making and reflection, which, we argue, is critical for teaching engineering design. This study takes place in [blinded] program, in which teachers take four graduate courses over fifteen months. The program was designed to help teachers not only learn engineering content, but also shift their thinking and practice to be more responsive to their students. Two courses focus on pedagogy, including what it means to learn engineering and instructional approaches to support this learning. These courses consist of four main elements, in which teachers: 1) Read data-rich engineering education articles to reflect on learning engineering; 2) Participate in online video clubs, looking at classroom videos of students’ engineering and commenting on what they notice; 3) Conduct interviews with learners about the mechanism of a pull-back car; and 4) Plan and teach engineering lessons, collecting and analyzing video from their classrooms. In the context of this program, we ask: what stances do teachers take toward learning and teaching engineering design? What shifts do we observe in their stances? We interviewed teachers at the start of the program and after each course. In addition to reflecting on their learning and teaching, teachers watched videos of students’ engineering and discussed what they saw as relevant for teaching engineering. We informally compared summaries from previous interviews to get a sense of changes in how participants talked about engineering, how they approached teaching engineering, and what they noticed in classroom videos. Through this process, we identified one teacher to focus on for this paper: Alma is a veteran 3rd-5th grade science teacher in a rural, racially-diverse public school in the southeastern region of the US. We then developed content logs of Alma's interviews and identified emergent themes. To refine these themes, we looked for confirming and disconfirming evidence in the interviews and in her coursework in the program. We coded each interview for these themes and developed analytic memos, highlighting where we saw variability and stability in her stances and comparing across interviews to describe shifts in Alma's reasoning. It was at this stage that we narrowed our focus to her stances toward the engineering design process (EDP). In this paper, we describe and illustrate shifts we observed in Alma's reasoning, arguing that she exhibited dramatic shifts in her stances toward teaching and learning the EDP. At the start of the program, she was stable in treating the EDP as a series of linear steps that students and engineers progress through. After engaging and reflecting on her own engineering in the first course, she started to express a more fluid stance when talking more abstractly about the EDP but continued to take it up as a linear process in her classroom teaching. By the end of the program, Alma exhibited a growing stability across contexts in her stance toward the EDP as a fluid set of overlapping practices that students and engineers could engage in. 

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3. Board 120: Development of an Engineering Identity and Career Aspirations Survey for Use with Elementary Students

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--32210  

   Paul, Kelli; Maltese, Adam; Miel, Karen; Portsmore, Merredith; Sung, Euisuk (June 2019, ASEE Conferences)

   nterest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) begins as early as elementary and middle school. As youth enter adolescence, they begin to shape their personal identities and start making decisions about who they are and could be in the future. Students form their career aspirations and interests related to STEM in elementary school, long before they choose STEM coursework in high school or college. Much of the literature examines either science or STEM identity and career aspirations without separating out individual sub-disciplines. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a survey instrument to specifically measure engineering identity and career aspirations in adolescents and preadolescents. When possible, we utilized existing measures of STEM identity and career aspirations, adapting them when necessary to the elementary school level and to fit the engineering context. The instrument was developed within the context of a multi-year, NSF-funded research project examining the dynamics between undergraduate outreach providers and elementary students to understand the impact of the program on students’ engineering identity and career aspirations. Three phases of survey development were conducted that involved 492 elementary students from diverse communities in the United States. Three sets of items were developed and/or adapted throughout the four phases. The first set of items assessed Engineering Identity. Recent research suggests that identity consists of three components: recognition, interest, and performance/competence. Items assessing each of these constructs were included in the survey. The second and third sets of items reflected Career Interests and Aspirations. Because elementary and middle school students often have a limited or nascent awareness of what engineers do or misconceptions about what a job in science or engineering entails, it is problematic to measure their engineering identity or career aspirations by directly asking them whether they want to be a scientist/engineer or by using a checklist of broad career categories. Therefore, similar to other researchers, the second set of items assessed the types of activities that students are interested in doing as part of a future career, including both non-STEM and STEM (general and engineering-specific) activities. These items were created by the research team or adapted from activity lists used in existing research. The third set of items drew from career counseling measures relying on Holland’s Career Codes. We adapted the format of these instruments by asking students to choose the activity they liked the most from a list of six activities that reflected each of the codes rather than responding to their interest about each activity. Preliminary findings for each set of items will be discussed. Results from the survey contribute to our understanding of engineering identities and career aspirations in preadolescent and adolescent youth. However, our instrument has the potential for broader application in non-engineering STEM environments (e.g., computer science) with minor wording changes to reflect the relevant science subject area. More research is needed in determining its usefulness in this capacity. 

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4. Evaluation of Summer Camp Recruitment Methods and Campers’ Perceptions of Engineering (Evaluation, Diversity)

   Fleming, Gabriella Coloyan; Fernandez, Kiersten Elyse; Julien, Christine; Mastronardi, Marialice (June 2023, 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Program leaders put a tremendous amount of thought into how they recruit students for engineering summer camps. Recruitment methods can include information sessions, established partnerships with school districts, and teacher or school counselor nominations of students. This study seeks to assess if the methods used to recruit students broaden participation or have any impact on students’ perceptions of engineering. Two identical week-long summer camps were hosted by the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) in the summer of 2022. Camps were entirely free for all campers. A specific goal of the camp was to promote engineering as a career pathway for students from groups that have been historically excluded from STEM majors. Campers were rising 8th and 9th grade students in two cities near UT Austin; this age was intentionally identified as students who have sufficient STEM backgrounds to engage in meaningful engineering design challenges, and who are also at a critical inflection point with respect to decisions that put them on a trajectory to study engineering in college. Summer camp topics ranged from additive manufacturing to the chemical properties of water proofing, and students did activities such as constructing a prosthetic limb from recovered materials or designing an electronic dance game pad. In one camp session, students primarily found out about the camp by being nominated by counselors at their schools, with an intentional focus on recruiting students who might not otherwise be exposed to engineering. In the other camp session, parents signed up campers after hearing about the camp via information sent through the schools. All students who applied were accepted to the camps. Identical pre- and post-camp surveys asked campers questions about their knowledge of what engineers do, their interest in math and science, and what factors are important to them when choosing a career. Survey analysis showed that there were statistically significant differences in answers to questions between the groups in the pre-camp surveys, but post-camp surveys show that these differences disappeared after participating in the summer camp. Students whose parents directly enrolled them in the camp had higher pre-camp interest in science and technology; thus, counselor nominations may be a method to recruit students who might not have been interested in engineering had they not attended the camp. Additionally, prior to participating, campers recruited via counselor nominations had a narrower view of what engineers do than the parent-enrolled campers, but after camp the two groups had similar perceptions of what engineers do. The results of this study confirm literature findings regarding the importance of exposing young learners to engineering as a profession and broaden their views of opportunities in this field. The recruitment methods used for these camps show that nomination-based recruitment methods have the potential for greater impact on changing students’ engineering trajectories. 

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5. The influence of notebooks on elementary teachers engaging in engineering practices.

   Johnson, M.M.; Gil, M. (June 2023, Proceedings ASEE annual conference)

   This fundamental research in pre-college education engineering study investigates the ways in which elementary teachers learn about engineering by engaging in the epistemic practices of engineers. Teaching engineering explicitly in elementary settings is a paradigm shift, as most K-6 teachers are not taught about engineering in their preparation programs and did not do classroom engineering as students. However, current STEM education reforms require these teachers to teach engineering in science settings and it will require concerted efforts between professional development providers and educational researchers to better help these teachers learn about and teach engineering to their students. Our study context consisted of 18 2nd and 4th grade teachers participating in one of two two-day workshops. The first day focused on what engineering is, what the epistemic practices of engineering are, and how to manage classroom engineering projects. The second day focused on how to teach a specific engineering unit for their grade level. Taking a sociomaterial view of learning, we asked the following research questions: 1. How do the engineering notebooks scaffold the teachers activities and discourse? 2. How and to what extent does the notebook support their engagement in engineering practices? Our analysis triangulated between three data sources during a two-hour time period where teachers designed, tested, and improved enclosures intended to minimize cost and mass loss of an ice cube in a heat chamber (“Perspiring Penguins” (Schnittka, 2010)). We focused on teacher talk/action collected from video/audio recordings trained on four small groups (10 total teachers). We also collected engineering notebooks they used during this activity. After initial analyses, we followed up with select teachers with targeted interview questions to focus on clarification of questions that arose. Our findings suggest that the teachers use the notebooks in ways that are significantly different from the ways engineers do; however, they are a useful pedagogical tool that supported them in attending to and discussing activities that were necessary to engage in engineering practices and design/re-design their technology. Additionally, our paper will describe specific examples where teachers had rich discussions that were not represented in the notebooks but there were references made in the notebooks that were not explicitly discussed. Implications for the importance of well-designed notebooks and the benefits of ethnographic methods for researching teacher learning will be discussed. 

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