Changes in Latino/a Adolescents' Engineering Self-efficacy and Perceptions of Engineering After Addressing Authentic Engineering Design Challenges

Abstract

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.

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