Fundamental Research: Characterizing Underrepresented Students' Interest in Engineering Careers and Their Teachers' Beliefs about Practices

Despite efforts to diversify engineering, gaps persist, with few Latino/as becoming engineers. The Southwest US is an ideal place to characterize student interest development in engineering, and to relate that interest to perceptions of instructional practices. This study contributes information about teachers and their students, who are predominantly Latino/a (>90%) from some of the highest poverty schools in the US. We investigate teacher and student perceptions of connecting instruction to student interests and culture and student ownership of STEM practices (students coming up with their own ways to solve problems, posing their own questions, and developing their own conclusions). Students also provided information about the relevance of instruction for their futures, whether they had a relative/friend who was an engineer, their interest in becoming an engineer, and their ideas about an engineering lab visited by their teachers. We compared their responses to teacher responses, finding them to be similar overall. We use multiple regression to model student interest in becoming an engineer. A significant regression equation was found (F(4, 230)= 11.26, p less than .001). Students who viewed what they were learning as important to their futures, and who reported having opportunities to draw their own conclusions were significantly more likely to express interest in becoming an engineer. Qualitative analysis of open ended responses revealed that most students could describe normative differences between science and engineering, but very few envisioned an active role for themselves, were they to be in the lab their teachers visited. Our findings suggest students’ perceptions of instruction play a larger role in engineering interest development than having a close relative/friend who is an engineer or teachers connecting to their personal interests. Providing opportunities for their students to pose their own questions or design their own procedures did not predict interest development, but they do align to the kinds of skills engineers need, suggesting that teachers may need support to develop these practices further. Taken with the qualitative analysis, such opportunities can also be used to help students envision active roles for themselves. Supporting interest development but not also supporting ability development will not address persistent gaps. Introduction and purpose Despite efforts to diversify engineering, gaps persist, with few Latino/as and Native Americans becoming engineers. The Southwest US is an ideal place to characterize student interest development related to becoming an engineer. This study contributes information about teachers and their students, who are predominantly Latino/a or Native American, from some of the highest poverty schools in the US. Our purpose is to characterize these students’ perceptions of classroom practices and to link these to their teachers’ perceptions of their own classroom practices; we then model their interest in pursuing engineering using their perceptions of classroom practices. We investigate their perceptions of what engineers do as a means to explore their willingness to try on engineering as a career. The teachers in this study are science and mathematics teachers who are aiming to incorporate engineering into their curriculum, following participation in a Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program. Our purpose is not to evaluate their capacity or success at this, or to detail the experiences they had in the RET, but rather to better understand the perceptions they and their students bring, as a means to consider how to design professional development experiences that aim to enhance diversity of the engineering pipeline. Conceptual framework Recruitment and retention of students from groups underrepresented in engineering has been the focus of a great deal of recent research. We take that stance that interest development is the first step for recruitment of students who otherwise might not consider engineering. Interest development is needed but insufficient for real change, as students who become interested but are poorly prepared are not likely to persist in engineering [1]. We therefore focus on strategies that develop interest and understanding. We review research on four meta-strategies for enhancing diversity by cultivating interest and/or developing understanding of engineering practices; we bring these together in our conceptual framework (Figure 1). First, connecting to students’ prior experiences and culture encompasses a range of student-centered strategies. A second strategy involves supporting student ownership of learning and providing students with opportunities to make and carry out decisions related to their learning (agency). A third strategy involves enhancing the perception that what students are learning is relevant for their future success. A fourth strategy involves engineering professional development for teachers as a means to provide students with access to someone with understanding of engineering. Figure 1. Conceptual framework guiding the study. We hypothesize that students from groups underrepresented in engineering are more likely to persist in engineering if they have access to one or more promising meta-strategies capable of developing their understanding of and interest in engineering. We review literature about each of these meta-strategies, and we surveyed students and teachers about each of these topics. Connecting to students’ prior experiences and culture Providing interesting educational materials can lead to deeper engagement and understanding because students make more associations with the material [2]. Connecting to students’ prior experiences and culture can support learning [3-7]. Such approaches help learners construct new understanding by building on what they already know [8]. We see approaches that connect to culture as a critical extension of such teaching; culturally relevant pedagogy connects to students’ cultural experiences and understanding [9-13]. In such approaches, students’ “funds of knowledge” are leveraged, using the resources students bring from their experiences in home and other culturally-specific out-of-school settings [14]. Such approaches reflect a range of studentcentered teaching, including using students’ strengths to introduce new instruction, supporting collaborative learning spaces, adapting curriculum, engaging in social justice and community engaged learning, etc. [15]. These approaches align to engineering education, as students can design solutions for their communities [16-18]. We investigated whether teachers and their students perceived that teachers were connecting instruction to their students’ interests and cultures. Ownership of learning In traditional classrooms, students seldom have opportunities to pose their own questions, design their own investigations, and solve problems of their choosing; commonly, a well understood problem is set for students to solve, and questions posed are examined for their alignment to the intended curriculum. Thus, in traditional school settings, opportunities for students to have agency and ownership over their learning are rare [19, 20], yet ownership can support persistence [21]. In order for students to understand STEM practices, they need opportunities to develop ownership of these practices by coming up with their own ways to solve problems, posing their own questions, and developing their own conclusions [22]. In engineering, in particular, they need opportunities to have ownership over the design problem; although posed by a customer or client, design problems are framed by the designer [23], leading to a sense of agency [24] and ownership [25]. Interest can drive a sense of ownership over learning [26], which in turn can foster a masteryoriented stance on learning [27] and help students make decisions about their futures [28]. One approach to support ownership development is through the use of project-based instruction [29]; creating artifacts that reflect learning can support ownership of learning [30] because students “can create themselves in the world and see themselves reflected back through the independent behavior of their creation” [31]. In project-based classrooms, more of the locus of control is shifted to the students than in traditional settings [32], providing that sense of agency and ownership. Because the teachers and students in this study were in science and mathematics classrooms, we asked about student opportunities to engage in science and mathematics practices that we see as relevant to engineering but also understandable to students in science and mathematics classrooms. Instrumentality: relevance of learning for future One way to examine career interest development is through the lens of instrumentality, which describes the degree to which an individual considers something s/he is learning to be useful in his/her future. Measures of instrumentality have been shown to predict course performance in a variety of settings, including engineering [33, 34]. Essentially, when students don’t see a need to learn something, their learning tends to be negatively impacted. Commonly, the courses that gate-keep advanced coursework—such as capstone design courses—include a large component of introductory or basic content that stands in as disciplinary knowledge [35]; in such cases, students who don’t see these components as useful will tend to perform less well. Increasing instrumentality for struggling and underserved learners is one way to support them. For instance, in project-based classrooms, instruction provides context that helps students connect what they are learning to why it matters and what it is useful for [36-39]. Project-based courses can change students’ minds about the usefulness of content they are learning [40]. We asked students to evaluate whether what they were learning mattered for their future