Background According to a growing body of research, many Latinas/os experience dissonance between their everyday cultural practices and the cultural practices prevalent in engineering. This dissonance contributes to many Latinas/os' sense that engineering is "not for me."Purpose This study sought to explore the meaning in the relationship between engineering cultural practices and the funds of knowledge found in Latina/o adolescents' familial, community, and recreational settings.Design/Method This ethnographic study followed seven groups of Latina/o adolescents as they identified problems in their communities and solved them through engineering design processes. Using a modified form of constant comparative analysis, we analyzed three data sources: individual interviews, observations of group meetings, and concurrent or retrospective protocols. We developed a coding scheme that categorized the participants' funds of knowledge as they related to engineering. ResultsThe participants' everyday skills and bodies of knowledge aligned with engineering practices. Specifically, their familial, community, and recreational funds of knowledge mapped onto the application of engineering design processes, systems thinking, ethical and empathetic reasoning, knowledge of production and processing, use of communication and construction tools, scientific and mathematical knowledge, and teamwork.Conclusions Engineering instruction for Latina/o adolescents can be reconceptualized as a third space of learning and knowing where adolescents' everyday familial, community, and recreational practices are actively solicited and connected with the cultural practices of engineering.
Background: Across academic disciplines, researchers have found that argumentation-based pedagogies increase learners' achievement and engagement. Engineering educational researchers and teachers of engineering may benefit from knowledge regarding how argumentation related to engineering has been practiced and studied. Purpose/Hypothesis: Drawing from terms and concepts used in national standards for K-12 education and accreditation requirements for undergraduate engineering education, this study was designed to identify how arguments and argumentation related to the engineering-designed world were operationalized in relevant literature. Methodology: Specified search terms and inclusion criteria were used to identify 117 empirical studies related to engineering argumentation and educational research. A qualitative content analysis was used to identify trends across these studies.Findings: Overall, engineering-related argumentation was associated with a variety of positive learner outcomes. Across many studies, arguments were operationalized in practice as statements regarding whether an existing technology should be adopted in a given context, usually with a limited number of supports (e.g., costs and ethics) provided for each claim. Relatively few studies mentioned empirical practices, such as tests. Most studies did not name the race/ethnicity of participants nor report engineering-specific outcomes.Conclusions: Engineering educators in K-12 and undergraduate settings can create learning environments in which learners use a range of epistemic practices, including empirical practices, to support a range of claims. Researchers can study engineering-specific outcomes while specifying relevant demographics of their research participants. K E Y W O R D S argumentation, engineering education, systematic review
Dustin Drake is currently a graduate student at Utah State University. While being raised in a small town in southern Utah, Dustin had very few experiences with regards to diversity in his community. As a young adult, he had the opportunity to live in Guadalajara, Mexico, for a few years. He immersed himself in this new culture, learned the language, and loved experiencing new ways of seeing the world. Through this foreign experience, Dustin recognized a shift in his identity. These experiences also led him to become a language educator. He now teaches ESL courses to Spanish speakers, basic Spanish to English speakers, and English and Composition to fluent English speakers. Because of the interwoven nature of culture, language, and identity, Dustin studies explore identity development in different educational and cultural contexts. Dr. Amy Wilson-Lopez, Utah State University -Teacher Education and LeadershipAmy Wilson-Lopez is an assistant professor at Utah State University who studies how literacy instruction can improve adolescents' engineering design thinking and activity. Community-based engineering design activities were used to provide Latino/a adolescents with authentic engineering experiences with the intention of increasing their engineering self-efficacy and changing their perceptions of engineering. Twenty five Latino/a adolescents (ages 14 to 17)-most of whom were either immigrants or English learners-were purposefully selected to work on different community-based engineering design activities, which are engineering experiences where the adolescents had the opportunity to research, analyze, and/or design solutions to problems affecting their community. The adolescents worked in teams of three or four members over the course of one school year to develop a solution to the problem they selected. Pre and post-interviews were conducted to determine the adolescents' perceptions of engineering and their self-efficacy in engineering. Data revealed that the participants' sense of engineering selfefficacy increased after participating in the project. In addition, the participants' perceptions of engineering changed over time. This exploratory study suggests that authentic engineering experiences, defined as experiences in which students identify real problems they want to solve for real clients, hold the potential to attract Latino/a adolescents to STEM.
The purpose of this multiple case study was to identify the forms of science capital that six groups of adolescents mobilized toward the realization of their self‐selected engineering projects during after‐school meetings. Research participants were high school students who self‐identified as Hispanic, Latina, or Latino; who had received English as a Second Language (ESL) services; and whose parents or guardians had immigrated to the United States and held working class jobs. The research team used categories from Bourdieusian theories of capital to identify the forms of science capital mobilized by the participants. Data sources included transcripts from monthly interviews and from bi‐monthly group meetings during which the group members worked on their engineering projects. Data analysis indicated that the groups activated science capital in the following categories: embodied capital in the form of formal scientific knowledge, literacy practices, and experiences with solving everyday problems; social capital in the form of connections with authorities, experts, and peers; objectified capital in the form of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and measuring tools; and institutional capital in the form of awards and titles. The participants co‐mobilized multiple forms of science capital to advance their engineering projects, and some instances of co‐mobilization enabled the future activation of subsequent forms of science capital. Engineering, as a vehicle for learning science, provided the youth with opportunities to draw from diverse community resources and from multilingual literacy practices, recasting these resources and skills as forms of science capital, which were mobilized toward the attainment of other high‐status forms of science capital. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 55: 246–270, 2018
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