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Observations in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department of a large land-grant university with approximately 20% Latina/o enrollment revealed that Latina engineering students are significantly less likely to attend graduate school than women from other ethnic or racial groups. This observation is consistent with national trends showing underrepresentation of Latina/o populations in STEM disciplines. With this motivating background, a study has been undertaken to explore the social, cultural, educational, and institutional factors affecting matriculation of undergraduate Latina engineering students into graduate engineering programs and/or industry careers. A research team was formed with four members (co-authors of this paper) from diverse backgrounds but a common commitment toward an asset-based approach that avoids marginalizing individuals in the research design process and by selecting respective methods. Results of these team discussions and decisions sought balance between various philosophical perspectives. This work-in-progress paper describes the mixed-methods research design considerations in formulating the study with emphasis on the quantitative portion. Detailed development of the qualitative portions of the study are still in progress and will be reported at future date. 

This study advances our team’s overall design and development goal of creating a valid and reliable observation protocol for science and engineering practices (SEPs) experienced by teachers working in research laboratories under the auspices of Research Experience for Teachers (RET). This protocol offers the potential for addressing a wide range of persistent questions related to the experience of RET participants by looking inside the blackbox of apprenticed professional research practice. Framed by cognitive apprenticeship and situated in an engineering RET for K5 teachers, we independently document the SEPs that were consistently experienced across laboratory contexts and thus define a generalized teacher experience. Further, we identify key associations among the teacher's perception of their work, an independent observation of that activity and the perceptions reported by their graduate student mentors. Findings indicate that teacher participants’ perceptions of involvement and not actual experience was a more important predictor of confidence in practice. Perhaps most striking was the negative relationship between teacher confidence when working with mentors (r = -.242), which is similarly described by the mentors for working with teachers (r = -.356). This implies a strong need for further work and support for helping these unique individuals to understand each other’s goals and perspectives and for finding a way to work together that generates mutual feelings of confidence and satisfaction.