Engineering outreach programs often portray outreach educators as role models for youth. It is widely believed that introducing youth, especially girls, to potential engineering role models will broaden participation in engineering majors and careers. Based on interviews with and surveys of fourth- and fifth-grade girls participating in an…

Engineering for US All (e4usa) is a National Science Foundation-funded first-of-its-kind initiative aimed at making engineering more inclusive and accessible to underrepresented populations. The "for us all" mission of e4usa encompasses both students and teachers. Paramount to the success of e4usa was the construction of professional…

Trade-off decisions, which necessitate striking a balance between two or more desirable but competing features, are a crucial part of design practice. However, they are known to be difficult for student designers to make. While designers, educators, and researchers have numerous methods to assess the quality of design artifacts, these methods are…

This multi-methods study explores changes in engineering interest and identity of middle and high school students (n = 79) attending introductory-level engineering summer camps at a large western land grant university. Middle school is a critical time when student interest, identity, and subsequently career choice begin to emerge and hence it is…

Teaching engineering at the middle and high school levels has been a topic of discussion among scholars regarding the challenges it creates. One of the most critical challenges at the school level is identifying qualified teaching staff to lead engineering courses. The present study explored teachers' willingness to lead an engineering course and…

K-12 students need to become familiar with engineering because 21st-century careers integrate engineering practices across all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. While the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) emphasize learning real science and engineering practices, further work is needed to authenticate…

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…

A major concern in engineering education involves ensuring that youth belonging to minoritized groups have equitable access to engineering career pathways. Related research often highlights the effect of student and school characteristics on engineering success but few studies have investigated the engineering-related assets that Black families…

This study describes an illustrative case study from a year-round program that positions middle and high school youth to explore the social value of energy systems in their homes, schools, and neighborhoods. Designed to center existing youth assets, interests and values, Community Energy Engineering (CEE) frames engineering as a tool that students…

Inequities in opportunities to learn and become in engineering, especially for minoritized youth, are enduring and systemic. How students experience engineering education, through curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher/student interactions, all shape opportunities for identity development. In this paper we draw upon cultural studies and critical…

Multilingual students should have opportunities to learn and do engineering in learning environments that foreground and sustain their cultural and linguistic practices. However, little is known about how middle school engineering teachers enact these environments. To address this gap in research and practice, this comparative case study describes…

The practice of persisting and learning from design failures is essential to engineering design and offers unique ways of knowing and learning for K-12 students. To understand how students engage in the practice of persisting and learning from design failures, we must first understand how, if at all, they recognize that a design failure has…

The purpose of the current study was to determine the impacts of a multiple-day engineering-focused professional development program on elementary teachers' perceptions of the work of engineers and their use of mathematics and science. Data were collected in the form of drawings of engineers prior to and immediately after the professional…

Extant research and engineering education frameworks call for students to engage in personally meaningful engineering projects; however, there are few case studies documenting the work of young engineers working to design solutions to real-world problems that matter to them. This qualitative case study describes the work of a purposively selected…

To effectively incorporate engineering into their instruction, K-12 teachers need sufficient knowledge of the engineering discipline. An important component of teachers' engineering knowledge is their understanding of the nature of engineering: what engineers do, the epistemological underpinnings of engineering, and the relationships between…