Engineering Education Commons^™

Stem For All Showcase Report, Bruce G. Bukiet, James M. Lipuma

STEM Month

This article and the associated STEM for all showcase submission video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clps427rdDc) was presented at the NSF 2021 STEM FOR ALL COVID, Equity & Social Justice Conference, May 11-18.

This article provides a description of the development of the STEM in your Home project in the STEM for Success initiative.

More Than Mechanisms: Shifting Ideologies For Asset-Based Learning In Engineering Education, Brian E. Gravel, Eli Tucker-Raymond, Aditi Wagh, Susan Klimczak, Naeem Wilson

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

Learning spaces, the practices in which people engage, and the representations they use are ideological. Ideologies are coherent constellations of values, beliefs, and practices that impose order on how disciplines like engineering operate. Historically, engineering spaces have been dominated by a relatively technocratic, rationalistic, and exclusionary ideology, but more recent attention to asset-based approaches to engineering education offers transformative promise. Asset-based ideologies can reshape images of legitimized engineering practice, recasting engineering education to disrupt dominant exclusionary ideologies. This paper describes an assets-based learning space, SETC, that recaptures the imagination of engineering for technological and social change. Drawing from extensive ethnographic …

Equitable Pre-College Engineering Education: Teaching With Racism In Mind, James Holly Jr

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

Engineering educators must consider how the cultural backgrounds of students coincide (or diverge) with the epistemological and ontological formation of an engineer. Hence, this work is presented as an exhortation to engineering educators, particularly in a pre-college context, to critically evaluate how race-conscious pedagogies can be exerted in this field. In this autoethnographic study, I convey my attempt to teach engineering with explicit consideration of the sociopolitical context of the Black male youth I taught. As a Black male, I have an insider perspective into the realities that must be navigated to succeed in a racialized society, where Black males …

Transnational Latinx Youths’ Workplace Funds Of Knowledge And Implications For Assets-Based, Equity-Oriented Engineering Education, Amy Wilson-Lopez, Jorge Acosta-Feliz

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

Due to economic inequality in society, millions of Latinx high school youth work after-school jobs and summer jobs in order to provide additional income for their families. The purpose of this qualitative study, conducted with transnational Latinx youth, was to identify the engineering-related skills and bodies of knowledge they developed and applied while in different workplaces. This study is framed in complementary theories of funds of knowledge, Vygotskian theories of mediated action, and theories of resistant capital. Specifically, this study is based in the premise that youth can develop engineering-related funds of knowledge through tool-mediated, goal-directed activities jointly conducted with …

The Ingenuity Of Everyday Practice: A Framework For Justice-Centered Identity Work In Engineering In The Middle Grades, Angela M. Calabrese Barton, Kathleen Schenkel, Edna Tan

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

Inequities in opportunities to learn and become in engineering, especially for minoritized youth, are enduring and systemic. How students experience engineering education, through curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher/student interactions, all shape opportunities for identity development. In this paper we draw upon cultural studies and critical ethnography to explore how and why students engage in engineering for sustainable communities and its relationship to their identity work. We ground our work in a justice-centered asset-based stance that centers how people’s lived lives and community wisdom yield powerful forms of cultural knowledge/practice relevant to learning and engaging in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We …

Equitizing Engineering Education By Valuing Children’S Assets: Including Empathy And An Ethic Of Care When Considering Trade-Offs After Design Failures, Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue, John Settlage

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

The broad case being made in this paper is that recognizing student assets—rather than focusing on deficits—is essential for making engineering education more equitable. The paper begins with our exploration of an epistemic practice of engineering, ‘‘making trade-offs,’’ as enacted by kindergartners after experiencing design failure and during redesign. We then acknowledge through a reexamination of data that our understanding of children’s grappling about a trade-off was incomplete without considering another asset that children brought to the design experience: ‘‘enacting empathy and an ethic of care.’’ We argue for the inclusion of this asset as an epistemic practice of engineering. …

Reflections On Asset-Based Pre-College Engineering Education To Promote Equity: An Introduction To The Special Issue, Lee Martin, Kristen B. Wendell

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

In our call for proposals, we argued that engineering education is in need of a paradigm shift that takes students’ assets as epistemologically primary to our conception of what engineering, and engineering education, can and should be. The 12 papers collected in this special issue show how a focus on youth assets can realign engineering education to be more humane, more inclusive, and just as meaningful as that of a traditional model. The papers offer both theoretical argumentation and empirical evidence to support their answers to the question of how asset-based approaches can improve engineering education. An emergent theme in …

Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Engineering Education: An Exploration Of European Higher Education Institutions’ Strategic Frameworks, Resources, And Initiatives, I. Direto, Shannon Chance, L. Clemmensen, S. Craps, S.B. Economides, S.R. Isaac, A.M. Jolly, F.R. Truscott, N. Wint

Conference papers

Significant efforts have been made to promote gender equality in higher education (HE) in Europe. Examples include the establishment of the Athena Swan Charter in the UK in 2005 and the 2019 launch of the Irène Curie Fellowship scheme by Eindhoven University of Technology. But which initiatives address broader diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) challenges in HE? And which are specifically focused on engineering education? This exploratory study aims to improve our understanding of the ways in which a set of European HE Institutions engaged in engineering education address DEI at an organisation level, and how this is communicated within …