The maker movement has been increasingly adopted as a means for promoting interdisciplinary approaches to STEM learning. However, empirical evidence regarding how making supports the development of engineering design skills remains limited and inconclusive. This study provides an in-depth examination of a nonformal educational initiative grounded in tinkering, a creative and improvisational subset of making, by analyzing the tasks undertaken by primary school children in a tinkering setting. Our results confirm the capacity of tinkering activities to foster specific engineering design practices and elucidate the interrelationships between them. Furthermore, the findings highlight the potential of such approaches to facilitate the progression of students’ expertise throughout the design process. This work contributes to a more nuanced understanding of tinkering, offering insights for the design of effective pedagogical strategies to promote engineering design learning in informal settings.
Meeting the goals of US K–12 science education reform requires that preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) understand engineering as a specialized discipline and a human endeavor that addresses real-world issues. Yet in their formal education, few PSTs receive opportunities to learn about the humanistic dimensions of engineering: engineers’ personal values and motivations, the sociocultural nature of engineering work, and the societal significance of engineering. Storytelling about engineering offers a practical way to give PSTs access to these ideas. This study examines the impacts of integrating storytelling about engineering in a science methods course for future elementary school teachers. Over a two-year period, we iterated on and studied our approach, in which PSTs (n = 87) read, discussed, and reflected upon a series of stories, and also cocreated, copresented, and reflected upon their own engineering stories. In the latter year of the study, we developed a new set of stories that focused on sustainability to further advance a humanistic perspective of engineering. The data collected were pre-and postsurveys about the nature of engineering, PSTs’ cocreated engineering stories, and individual reflections. Data were analyzed using a convergent mixed methods approach, focusing on changes in PSTs’ conceptions of engineering. Analyses revealed shifts in PSTs’ understandings of engineering that aligned with the stories as well as an increased confidence in teaching about engineering. As such, the stories appeared to humanize engineering and offered PSTs a discrete and interdisciplinary way of integrating engineering into their future classrooms. Implications are discussed for teacher educators and researchers.
Promoting gender equity and inclusion in STEM education remains a central priority, yet empirical research inclusive of transgender and gendernonconforming (TGNC) students is limited, particularly in precollege engineering contexts. This study leverages social cognitive career theory (SCCT) to identify latent profiles of students’ engineering-related beliefs while examining how TGNC students are represented across these profiles relative to their cisgender and gender nonreporting peers. The study draws on four years (2019–2023) of repeated cross-sectional survey data from a national precollege engineering initiative involving 75 high schools across 20 US states. Seven SCCT-related constructs were measured and used as part of latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify student profiles. Independent-samples t-tests were conducted to examine pre-post differences within profiles and to compare gender groups at both time points. LPA supported a four-profile solution— highly engaged, moderately engaged, emerging, and disengaged—differentiated by levels of engineering identity and intentions. From presurvey to postsurvey, the proportion of students in the highly engaged and moderately engaged profiles increased, while the emerging and disengaged profiles declined. Gender comparisons indicated that cis-man and cis-woman students generally followed this upward trend, whereas TGNC students exhibited a polarized pattern. TGNC students showed higher postsurvey means in self-efficacy, contextual support and barriers, and engineering identity, though only the increase in engineering identity approached statistical significance (p = .047), and this result was not confirmed by nonparametric testing. Differences in other SCCT constructs were mixed. These findings suggest that TGNC students experience precollege engineering courses in distinct and uneven ways. The results highlight the need to collect more detailed and nuanced gender identity data using person-centered approaches to capture within-group variation and to inform equitable instructional design.
Our work aims to inform, design, and create data visualization tools that are meant to be integrated specifically into social studies classes. In this essay we discuss the use of participatory design methods to learn what social studies teachers (both pre-service and in-service) want in their classrooms and test the usability of real tools with these participants. Through this approach we iteratively engage our users, and they inform the design and development of learning tools for the learning and instruction of social studies data literacy. Using a social construction of technology lens, we describe the scaffolding embedded in our tools through social studies teachers’ perceptions of usefulness and usability in the data literacy tools they explored. Through this analysis of the data, four major themes emerged that we suggest considering when designing engineering tools for K–12 social studies teacher users. Finally, we discuss how our results resonate with prior research and guide the future direction of our work.
Precollege students in Indonesia, especially in rural and coastal regions, often lack exposure to engineering disciplines due to social, geographic, and informational barriers. This essay proposes a conceptual model of alumni-led near-peer outreach as an affective and culturally grounded mechanism to engage high school students in ocean engineering. Drawing from theories of social similarity, possible selves, and engineering identity, the model conceptualizes alumni as “aspirational mirrors” who influence students not merely through information but also through identification. The model outlines four primary mechanisms—social connection, narrative engagement, aspirational mirroring, and early identity activation—and also accounts for contextual variables such as school environment, gender, and community attitudes. The conceptual model is grounded in field observations from the Ocean Engineering Department at Universitas Hasanuddin, where students frequently return to their former high schools to share experiences and offer guidance. These informal visits demonstrate how relatable role models from the same background can enhance awareness, motivation, and perceived accessibility of engineering education. Students report increased self-efficacy, curiosity, and emotional resonance after such visits. Teachers note that alumni are uniquely positioned to communicate with credibility and empathy, especially in underresourced settings. The model has practical implications for the design of low-cost, community-rooted outreach programs that complement formal STEM promotion efforts and also offers a basis for further empirical research on informal peer-based science communication in Global South contexts. This essay contributes to the discourse on inclusive engineering education by highlighting how relational proximity and identity-based mentorship can expand access to technical fields.
Limited research focuses on how participating in place-conscious engineering affects students’ engineering identities and attitudes toward engineering. This explanatory sequential mixed methods study investigated the effect of engaging elementary school students in place-conscious engineering activities on their engineering identities and attitudes toward engineering. Twenty fourth grade students enrolled in a rural elementary school in the northwestern United States completed two place-conscious engineering activities: (1) after a local wildfire polluted the air with smoke and made it unhealthy for breathing, students designed and built air filters to prevent smoke from entering the homes of affected families residing in a nearby community, and (2) after the state issued several warnings about imminent floods due to ice jams on a local river, students designed flood prevention strategies to address this challenge. Data included pre-and postsurveys about students’ engineering identities and attitudes toward engineering as well as semistructured focus group interviews to explain the trends observed from the quantitative surveys. Findings suggested that participation in place-conscious engineering activities improved elementary school students’ engineering identities and attitudes toward engineering and technology. Students reported that they were satisfied with learning engineering, appreciated its societal benefits, developed positive perceptions of engineers, and desired to pursue engineering careers. Further, they took pride in themselves as individuals capable of solving real local problems. Based on these findings, recommendations include exposing elementary school students to place-conscious engineering activities to improve their engineering identities and attitudes toward engineering.
Precollege engineering teachers bring unique backgrounds to their teaching practice. Many follow nontraditional routes to teaching engineering, often coming from teaching other subjects or careers in other fields. Among the many variations influencing engineering teaching practices is pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This multiple case study explores the PCK of five middle school engineering teachers implementing the same middle school engineering curriculum, STEM innovation and design (STEM-ID). STEM-ID engages students in contextualized challenges that incorporate foundational mathematics and science and advanced manufacturing tools such as computer-aided design and 3D printing while introducing engineering concepts such as pneumatics, aeronautics, and robotics. Drawing on observation and interview data collected over two semester-long implementations of STEM-ID, the study addresses the research question regarding what variations in PCK are evident among engineering teachers with different professional backgrounds and levels of experience. Five teachers were purposively selected from a larger group of teachers implementing the curriculum because they represent a range of professional backgrounds. The study utilizes the Refined Consensus Model of PCK to investigate connections between teacher backgrounds, personal PCK (pPCK), the personalized professional knowledge held by teachers, and enacted PCK (ePCK), the knowledge teachers draw on to engage in pedagogical reasoning while planning, teaching, and reflecting on their practice. Observation and interview data were triangulated to develop narrative case summaries, followed by cross-case analysis to identify patterns and themes across teachers. Findings describe how teachers’ backgrounds translated into diverse forms of pPCK that informed pedagogical moves and decisions teachers made as they implemented the curriculum (ePCK). Regardless of the previous subject taught (math, science, or English language arts), teachers routinely drew upon their pPCK in other subjects as they facilitated the engineering design process. In addition to contributing to the field’s understanding of engineering teachers’ PCK, these findings hold implications for the recruitment, retention, and professional development of engineering teachers.
This mixed methods study explored possible factors that could impact elementary school students’ engineering design and optimization decisions. Data were collected from six teachers and 117 students in six fourth grade classrooms that implemented the Engineering is Elementary geotechnical engineering unit, A Stick in the Mud: Evaluating a Landscape. Students were to recommend to villagers their site decision of where to build a TarPul bridge based on four properties: soil type, villager preference, amount of compaction needed, and location less prone to erosion. Data sources included a pre-and post-assessment question, students’ documentation of property choices for their first and optimized design decisions, student lists of constraints and criteria to solve the problem, and teacher interview responses. Statistically significant differences in student design decisions were identified, and these findings were contextualized with qualitative analyses. The results suggest that design decisions were influenced by the following factors: (a) the students’ understanding of the geotechnical disciplinary concepts needed to solve the engineering problem, (b) each teacher’s chosen supplemental instruction based on content of which they identified students were unfamiliar, and (c) the students’ emotional connections to an idea or belief. From comparing students’ design decisions and teacher reports of their supplementary instruction for a selected property, the findings revealed that students in each respective class privileged the emphasized property in their design decisions. Of less influence were students’ early and sometimes incomplete identification of constraints and criteria. Examination of students’ optimization decisions indicated that most students considered trade-offs as they weighed the advantages and disadvantages of each property, whether or not they initially had prioritized a particular property. The results provide insight into the benefits and implications of teachers’ instructional decisions when supporting elementary school students’ engineering design problem-solving as well as factors students consider when making design decisions.
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), different institutional and cultural factors seemingly play a significant role in influencing women’s decisions to enroll in undergraduate engineering programs. In this work, we aim to uncover key influences that affect young women’s decisions to pursue undergraduate engineering studies in Lebanon, an Arab country in the MENA region. First, we conducted a survey during a student-led engineering summer program in 2024 at the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut. The survey participants were 47 high school female students from diverse regions and backgrounds in Lebanon. Next, to analyze the collected and cleaned data, we adopted an inductive thematic analysis approach. We conducted a round of open coding, followed by focused coding to generate our findings inductively from the raw data. We further analyzed the former in the context of social cognitive career theory. We employed multiple validity strategies to bolster the quality of research in our work. Our preliminary findings indicate that stereotypes, exposure to women engineers’ experiences, and the perception of certain engineering fields as male-dominated influenced women’s decisions to pursue engineering studies. Additionally, high schools, universities, the media, and governmental policies were perceived as influential factors by the survey respondents. These diverse influences seemed to impact women’s decisions to apply for and pursue undergraduate engineering studies both negatively and positively. Moreover, young women seemed to favor a major over another based on job market prospects and particular encouragement from parents and educators to justify their preferences. Finally, this work proposes recommendations for high schools and university outreach programs aimed at enhancing the inclusivity and attractiveness of undergraduate engineering programs for young women specifically in Lebanon and more broadly across the MENA region.
With intentional teacher facilitation, whole-class conversations can help students refine their engineering reasoning, consider new ideas, and make novel connections between different ways of defining or solving a problem. These conversations can also help students expand their engineering thinking to include perspectives of care and socioethical deliberations. A team of classroom teachers and university researchers has been enacting and studying whole-class engineering design conversations—Design Talks—in first through sixth grade classrooms. We organize Design Talks in five genres: problem-scoping talks, idea generation talks, design-in- progress talks, design synthesis talks, and impact talks. After five years of planning, implementing, and analyzing recorded classroom talks together, we conducted this qualitative study to learn about teachers’ perceptions of their experiences with Design Talks. Specifically, we ask how elementary teachers perceive the benefits of intentionally facilitated whole-class conversations during engineering design units. We found four key themes that characterize the six teachers’ reflections. First, teachers see that Design Talks facilitate students’ learning to listen, empathize, and communicate, a cross-curricular goal. Second, teachers see Design Talks as a mechanism for asset-based pedagogy in engineering. Third, teachers value how Design Talks provide opportunities for students to take a perspective of care in engineering design, helping students reflect on what concerns and whose concerns should be prioritized in engineering design problems. Fourth, teachers point out how Design Talks help students synthesize designs and their underlying concepts. These themes highlight the benefits of Design Talks from teachers’ perspectives, showing how they see these structured conversations supporting multiple goals for students’ learning and development.
Engineering’s systemic exclusion of Black people has been a decades-long inquiry. While critical race theory and community cultural wealth have been utilized to examine anti-Blackness in precollege engineering education, critical geographies have been underutilized. This essay contends that the deployment of a spatial imaginaries lens could be used to expand understandings of the spatial imaginary of anti-Blackness in the discipline. Using historical and contemporary data from an engineering high school as well as nonpositivist ways of knowing, the essay contends that examining spatial realities and underpinnings are opportune provocations for redefining purposes, assumptions, and values in precollege engineering education.
Homeschooling sparks controversy regarding the quality of education when compared to the traditional schooling system. However, homeschooling rates have doubled nationwide since the pandemic, especially among minorities. Funding and curricular material resources may be limited for homeschooling families, especially those from diverse backgrounds. Therefore, this essay discusses the need to expand the current boundaries of engineering education to include homeschooling communities. Drawing from our homeschooling experience, we present three recommendations that respect the cultures and unique characteristics of homeschooling to promote engineering practices in these communities. Our proposal challenges negative perceptions of homeschooling, enhancing our understanding of its unique characteristics to foster a strong engineering education preparation for all students.
Existing evidence highlights the significance of family STEM learning experiences during early childhood. However, there is a lack of research specific to early childhood family-based learning in the field of engineering, especially with preschool-age children (three to five years old). To address this gap and inform engineering education programs for young children, we conducted a design-based research study in collaboration with 15 Spanish-and English-speaking families with preschool-age children from low-income communities. Our study aimed to develop and test a series of family-based engineering design activities while also identifying underlying design principles. Guided by an asset-based family learning framework, which acknowledges the strengths and assets that families bring to STEM learning experiences and recognizes the unique nature of family learning compared to other contexts, we iteratively tested and revised three family-based engineering activities over approximately five months. Data were collected through videos of families interacting with the activities at home as well as postinteraction interviews with parents and caregivers. Based on the iterative testing and retrospective analysis, we identified three overarching design principles: (1) carefully consider the affordances of the activity materials, including open-endedness, flexibility, level of difficulty, and nature of feedback; (2) include narrative contexts and supports that motivate engagement in engineering practices and support user-centered design; and (3) present design challenges that connect with family interests and leverage the ways families naturally orient to the materials. These design principles extend existing research and highlight how educators can support the unique goals and learning practices of families through early childhood engineering education programs.
Many educators are increasingly seeking culturally relevant pedagogies they can employ to effectively engage their students. In Ghana a substantive set of hands-on STEM content has been created, incorporating locally available materials and cultural approaches while maintaining alignment to the national curricula. Against a backdrop of almost no public primary or junior high schools in the country containing any lab equipment, this approach leverages and celebrates the abundance of what is available within the locality. This challenges narratives of what is considered “good” and recenters power back with those in the classroom. Three sample activities and three firsthand stories are used to depict how this approach enhances academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness among students. Educators should look to their counterparts in Africa for inspiration in developing culturally relevant pedagogies for Black students globally.
Researchers posit that the way science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are taught to African Americans contributes to their underrepresentation in the STEM fields. STEM educators are increasingly utilizing culturally relevant pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching strategies, and culturally sustaining pedagogy to engage the African American STEM learner. However, these techniques are limited in addressing the holistic development, healing, and needs of African people.[1] This essay advocates for the use and study of a new educational model titled African-centered STEM education (ACSE). The authors contend that this model is effective for African American STEM learners and African people and benefits society as a whole. This essay includes an overview of the culturally relevant pedagogy framework and its variations, an explanation of the ACSE model and its advantages, and descriptions of implementations of the ACSE model and their outcomes. [1]The term “African” denotes all people of African descent..
This provocation is a journaling exercise to uncover the author's experiences of navigating child find, a process to identify specific learning disability needs for my oldest child. While the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act provides provisions to protect and support children with special needs, private schools do not operate equally. When considering how these inequities in the educational system overlap with precollege engineering education, there is a large gap the literature, positioning a dire need to move disability studies into the precollege engineering education space. The critical authoethnographic journal sheds light on the inequities and educational gaps that are present in precollege to college engineering education. This provocation piece concludes with an introspective and critical
Teachers and students bear the brunt of enacting K–12 engineering while having little input into engineering practices or values. In this reflective essay, a high school engineering teacher and an engineering education researcher reflect on a class bridging engineering and social justice. We describe the development of politicized trust with each other and students while partnering around shared commitments at a predominately Black school (e.g., Vakil et al., 2016). We also explore challenges in decentering conceptions of engineering derived from depoliticized, exclusionary practice. We demonstrate an urgent need to center educators and students from marginalized identities in formal engineering education.
Hands-on technology-enhanced pedagogies have been hailed as a panacea for engaging K–12 students in engineering. We unpack how the entanglement of the sociopolitical with the educational, namely how factors pertaining to resources and individual characteristics, impact engagement with such pedagogies. In particular, we expand upon how school funding, teacher preparation and support, access to out-of- school resources, and family background impact the in-and out-of- school resources students have access to. Further, we explain how characteristics such as a sense of belonging, pedagogical approaches, and assumptions and gatekeeping by adults impact students' ability to engage with hands-on engineering education. In doing so, we make a case for rethinking hands-on and technology-enhanced engineering learning for just and inclusive education.
Engineering education programs, especially at the P–12 level, pose inherent legal and ethical responsibilities pertaining to safety that cannot be ignored. Cultivating safer practices and habits during the design and hands-on development of engineering solutions starts well before students enter higher education engineering programs. P–12 engineering education programs play a critical role in enhancing safety awareness, developing safer habits, and improving safety culture, which has an influence on the safety practices that students carry with them into higher education programs and the workplace. This study analyzed the safety factors and accident occurrences reported by 305 P–12 engineering educators from the southern United States (U.S.), specifically focusing on differences in safety between engineering design/pre-engineering (ED/PE) courses and other types of P–12 engineering courses. Analyses found that ED/PE courses had a significantly greater proportion of accident occurrences over a five-year span in comparison to other P–12 engineering courses in the southern U.S. Further analyses identified six risk factors (e.g., course enrollment size) and 11 protective factors (e.g., various forms of safety training) that were significantly associated with accident occurrences in the southern U.S. ED/PE courses. Moreover, it was discovered that hot glue guns were involved in a significantly higher proportion of accidents in ED/PE courses compared to other P–12 engineering courses in the southern U.S.; however, there were no significant differences in the proportion of accidents involving other tools or items. As suggested by accident causation model research, the data from this study can inform proactive safety efforts to address significant safety risk and protective factors in P–12 engineering education courses, which should reduce the severity and occurrence of accidents. Additionally, this study provides implications for fostering collaborative safety efforts among P–12 engineering education programs, higher education engineering programs, and engineering workforce partners to address critical gaps in safety instruction.
Research has consistently highlighted the importance of promoting child-parent interactions. In this essay, we describe the development of MAKEngineering kits that provide collaborative learning experiences for children in Grades 2–6 to engage in engineering design tasks with members of their families in their home environment. First, we present five design principles that emerged through a design-based research approach. Second, we used data from our research project to examine the impact of the MAKEngineering kits, guided by each design principle, on children's and parents' experiences as engineering learners and/or educators. In attending to both of these purposes, we argue for the inclusion of the five design principles in engineering-based programs as a way to guide parent-child interactions and support families as engineering learners and educators. One significance of this paper lies in the kits' potential to diminish lack of access to other nonformal learning environments, as well as support parents as engineering educators in an everyday context.
