Young adolescent perceptions of engineers within a summer outreach program (work in progress)

Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been a continued increase of K-12 STEM programs across the United States that focus on promoting the development of youths' engineering identity and interest in STEM-related career paths. In this paper, we present work in progress, focusing our discussion on rising 7th and 8th grade youth drawings and accompanying explanations of an engineer in action, as part of a summertime STEM summer outreach program for underrepresented minority middle school youth. Our work is an adaptation of Draw an Engineer Test (DAET) [1] which focuses on the stereotypical understandings and (mis)conceptions adolescents have of scientists and engineers in traditional PK- 12 classroom settings. The context of this study, however, is an informal STEM learning environment, entitled Bulls-Engineering Youth Experience for Promoting Relationships, Identity Development and Empowerment (Bulls-EYE PRIDE) at the University of South Florida. The question that guided this study was: What are youths' perceptions of engineers and the work that they do? Our data consisted of (n=72) mentee drawings of engineers and their explanations, during focus group interviews, about the gender and the specific tasks the engineers in their drawings personified. A preliminary analysis of the results shows the emergence of two themes: (1) confirmed and contradictory engineer gender stereotypes, and (2) varied engineer roles. This paper will describe the preliminary findings from the first and second year of the research and describe implications for future research and engineering education.