Engineering Commons^™

Secondary Students' Conceptual Understanding Of Engineering As A Field, Devlin B. Montfort, Shane Brown, Victoria Whritenour

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

Researchers have long been interested in how to recruit and retain more and more diverse students into engineering programs. One consistent challenge in this research is understanding the impacts of interventions from the point of view of the student, and how their preconceptions may influence that effectiveness. This study investigated how secondary students understand the concept of engineering, including what engineering is and what engineers do. The purpose of this work was to describe students’ conceptions of engineering, and to determine how those perceptions relate to student interest in engineering careers. The investigation was founded on the theoretical framework of …