Informal Pathways to Engineering: Middle-School-Aged Homeschool Students’ Experiences with Engineering (Fundamental)

As efforts continue to promote increased engineering learning in school settings, it is important to also consider engineering learning in out-of-school settings, including learning that takes place as part of an informal learning experience or a homeschool experience. In this paper, we explore the experiences of middle-school-aged homeschool students whose families work to promote their children’s STEM learning experiences, investing time and effort to ultimately cultivate rich and diverse engineering learning experiences for their children. The findings presented in this paper are based on interviews and surveys of 10 middle-school-aged children and their parents who participated in a longitudinal study of informal engineering learning. These findings provide insights into how homeschool parents access engineering learning resources, as well as the breadth of opportunities available for engineering learning in out-of-school settings. Introduction Engineering as a K-12 subject has received increasing attention over the past 15 years, beginning with its adoption in Massachusetts state standards in 2001, it’s presence in 41 states’ standards by 2011 [1], and finally the inclusion of engineering in the Next Generation Science Standards that were released in 2014 [2]. Engineering has also been a focus for numerous out-of-school initiatives, including Girl Scouts, 4-H, Boy Scouts, afterschool programs, media project like Design Squad, National Engineers Week, and FIRST Robotics Competitions. These efforts – to include engineering in formal education settings as well as informal settings – have been motivated by three major factors: (1) a push for equity and access, where there is parity in the participation of men and women, people of all ethnic backgrounds, people of all socio-economic backgrounds, and people of different abilities; (2) a concern for a workforce shortage; and (3) a focus on global competitiveness, where engineering education can promote both the learning of math and science and an engineering-literate society, which has the problem solving and technical skills needed to be globally competent. In light of the first and third motivations for pre-college engineering education, we must consider the experiences of all pre-college students as we work to characterize their involvement in engineering learning. While an increasing number of research studies have examined the experiences of students across the K-12 continuum, from a range of geographic locations and socio-economic backgrounds, one group of students that has been largely overlooked by engineering education researchers is homeschool students. As of spring 2011, approximately 1.77 million students in the United States are being homeschooled [3, 4] and the homeschool population is growing at a rate of 2-8% per year [5]. There has been research examining the impact of teacher professional development on traditionally schooled students engineering learning [6], but none on the processes by which homeschool parents learn to support their children in their engineering studies. There have also been studies researching student engineering learning in school settings, as well as student engineering learning in out-of-school settings – but not the engineering learning of students who experience inand out-of-school as fluid and blurred. P ge 26961.2 Understanding the experiences of homeschool children and their families can have far-reaching implications for traditional school settings. Homeschool settings have the potential to be exemplar cases of truly student-centered learning experiences. For instance, where parents follow an un-schooling approach [7, 8] the homeschool students and parents are able to allow the students’ interests to guide the learning activities. Understanding how a child’s interest in engineering develops in these cases, where engineering can become the central focus of learning, and barriers of fixed school days, fixed school calendars, and testing are removed, can provide insights into how engineering learning progresses. How different activities support the development of an interest in and understanding of engineering can help other parents and teachers consider how they might foster these in their own children and students. This paper examines the engineering learning experiences of 10 homeschool families. These 10 families represent a subset of a larger study aimed at investigating how informal engineering programs support engineering-related learning over time. In this paper, we address the questions of: How do informal engineering programs for middle-school aged homeschool populations support engineering-related learning over time? What are the ways in which homeschool families experience engineering education, particularly through informal engineering programs? For this study, we are defining “informal engineering programs” as activities, resources, and events that occur outside of a school setting, which children can engage in alone or with others, on their own time outside of school. Such programs may be self-regulated, assisted by a parent, or led by an informal educator (e.g., a camp counselor). The Informal Pathways to Engineering Study To answer our research questions, we created a longitudinal study following 60 middle school students in two states. 10 of these students are not traditionally schooled. 8 students are currently homeschooled by their parent(s) and 2 students attend virtual public schools and have instructors who are not their parents. (We defined homeschool students as students who do not attend a school on a daily basis outside of the home.) We are in the process of collecting data via surveys and interviews annually from students as they progress from sixth to eighth grade. Students, parents, and educators (informal and formal) are being interviewed at three different points in time. The data presented in this paper is based on the first two interviews, with the third round of data collection scheduled for later this spring. In addition to participating in the interviews, students and parents are also asked to complete surveys at each interview milestone, and periodically throughout the study. This paper focuses only on the homeschool student population; interim findings from the larger study can be found in other papers (e.g. [9]). With the surveys and interviews, rather than using the term “engineering,” we discussed the children’s interests and engagement in “creating, designing, and building.” (See Appendix A-1 and A-2 for the full first-year interview protocols.) This terminology was chosen in order to capture the experiences of children who might not immediately recognize how their interests were engineering-related or self-identify with the term “engineering.” Page 26961.3 Preliminary Findings As noted above, data collection and analysis for this study is ongoing. From the first two years of data collection, we are finding that families choose to homeschool their children for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they recognize their children are self-motivated and independent learners, and that they want to support their children in pursuing their own interests. The homeschool parents in our study tap into a wide array of informal engineering education resources, including magazine subscriptions, websites, clubs, curricula, and tutors. However, as their children get older, it appears that the homeschool parents are getting more anxious about being able to prepare their children for college, including their ability to access resources that foster their children’s growth and interest in STEM, especially engineering. They also appear to lack confidence that they themselves will be able to teach STEM to their children. This has led a few families in our study to consider enrolling their children in public school. We describe these themes in further detail in the remainder of this section. Motivations for homeschooling Each family described the reasons for homeschooling their children. These reasons included, but were not limited to, family values, religious philosophies, logistical complications, educational options at matriculation age, and negative experiences in traditional classroom settings. The following quotes express their motivations for homeschool: We began just with the thought that it would be best at that time for Fred specifically, and really our options were not optimal. The options that we had in our community. While you can do school transfers, the school that was nearest us was, and currently is, a school that is constantly having... It has some troubles, certainly, and it would not be the optimal educational experience for him. – Fred’s mom He went to a kindergarten co-op thing which was great, and we loved that. And then we homeschooled him for first grade. He wanted to go to school so he went to public school in 2 grade and he hated it. And I think if you wanted to know why he hated it, he found it very stifling. School is about; sit down and do what you’re told to do. The school that he’d had before, this co-op place, was a very child-centered. Like, “What would you like to learn today?” Self-directed kind of, and that’s certainly how we do things at home. So he’s been home since then. – Nelson’s mom When I was a young adult I was in a church where people were primarily home schooling. And I was in it long enough to see the long-term results. And what I saw was the flexibility that we had, and I liked the product. I was there are enough that I could see the kids grow into high school and I thought, “Ah, these kids are very well rounded. They’re not very peer-dependent.” What we wanted to get away from was the peer issues. – Alexander’s mom ...if I’d wanted to enroll him in kindergarten the following year when he would have turned five in August, the cut off was August 1, for the age. So he would have been not only way advanced than his peers, he would have been th