Poverty and guidance: Challenges and opportunities in mathematics preparation for engineering

Abstract

The Statewide Coalition Supporting Underrepresented Populations in Precalculus through Organizational Redesign Towards Engineering Diversity (SC:SUPPORTED), a Design and Development Launch Pilot funded under the National Science Foundation INCLUDES program, is a coalition of secondary districts and postsecondary institutions throughout South Carolina that have joined together to address the systemic issue of mathematics preparation and placement for students pursuing or intending to pursue engineering degrees. In Year One of the project, we used individual data for all 21,656 first-year STEM-intending students enrolled in a public two- or four-year postsecondary institution with ABET-accredited engineering programs in the state to identify specific pathways with high rates of placement in or above calculus, pathways with balanced rates of placement in/below calculus, pathways with high rates of placement below calculus, and 'missing' pathways: ones that produced disproportionately few engineering-intending students. From the pathways analysis we identified target locations for focus groups to identify factors that do not readily appear in institutional data, such as the impact of guidance counselor recommendations in a student's selection of their last high school math course taken. Broad themes emerging from the focus groups provided additional insight into potential interventions at multiple points along educational pathways. These themes also contributed to both the development of a survey for statewide administration and a follow-up study to develop profiles of school district decision-making with direct and indirect effects on mathematics preparation and major selection of students from that district. As we conclude Year Two of our launch pilot, in this paper we integrate a subset of results from different aspects of the project to address both quantitative impact and qualitative context of the roles that poverty and guidance play in gaining access to engineering in South Carolina.