The purpose of this study was to address issues of potential gender bias in pre-service elementary teachers' conceptions of engineers and engineering using Freire's (2018) "Critical Consciousness" perspective. By identifying the biasness as causal and structural attributions, the study also aimed to construct a critical pedagogy…

Nearly one-fifth of U.S. children attend rural schools; however, these students have fewer opportunities for high-quality STEM learning. Rural students are also less likely to attend college and less likely to enroll in STEM majors than their urban and suburban peers. In conjunction with these factors, female students are also less likely to…

STEM is a field where gender stereotypes regarding men persist. Women are underrepresented compared to men in STEM fields. The social belief that engineering is only for men discourages young girls from pursuing such endeavors. Encouraging young girls to enter STEM fields is crucial to dispel these stereotypes. Therefore, one of the essential…

Drawing on Bakhtin's (Discourse in the novel, University of Texas Press, 1981) notions of dialogism and appropriation, this case study explored how a 5-year-old Latina named Lucia negotiated the gender discourses involved in designing and building robots. The study findings revealed that Lucia performed her gender by appropriating different gender…

Purpose: Science museums provide a context for developing and testing engineering activities that support visitors in creating personally meaningful objects. This study aims to propose that narrative design elements in such engineering activities can foster empathy to support engineering engagement among girls ages 7-14.…

Background: Engineering design is widely recognized as a field that can generate key innovations for complex problems, such as those elucidated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, engineering design training is not widely accessible to the global community, particularly to people experiencing the challenges that the SDGs are…

Background: Tinkering, an ad hoc approach to solving a problem, involves manipulating objects to characterize and build knowledge about a particular system in an exploratory way, often with the goal of getting some product/idea to produce desired behavior. Tinkering contrasts more deliberate activity toward understanding how a phenomenon works.…

In the years 2005 to 2019, the number of American women receiving a degree in engineering was below 20 percent. Furthermore, even after receiving a degree in engineering, 40% of those girls do not enter the profession. While the above graduation data is essential for understanding the problem at the end of the educational journey, it doesn't point…

Purpose: This case study compares the actual and intended learning processes during the implementation of a science project through integrated STEM education as a learning approach. It also determines the implementation process's strengths and limitations. Method: The data collection method was mostly through classroom observation and document…

Background: There is a well-known gender disparity in the engineering field. Three of the most important factors related to the participation of women in engineering are differences in perceived societal relevance, technical self-efficacy, and tinkering self-efficacy. Purpose/Hypothesis: Soft robotics is a relatively new engineering application…

Broadening participation in STEM education programs and boosting the STEM workforce, specifically increasing interest in engineering, has been a growing focus of the U.S. education system (Lawrence & Mancus, 2012; Strimel, Grubbs, & Wells, 2017). The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects overall STEM employment to grow by 8.9% from 2014 to…

This article [explores] the learning of girls who were in a co-ed after school engineering club related to the project: Designing Vital Engineering and Literacy Practices for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math for Elementary Teachers and Children (DeVELOP STEM ETC). While few girls grow up to become engineers in the US, recently more…

As part of ongoing efforts to support a diverse and robust engineering workforce and ensure that children and adults from all communities have the engineering and design thinking skills to succeed in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-rich world, identity has become a growing focus of research and education efforts. To…

Although engineering design is dependent upon the use of science and mathematics, the actual prototype, model, or solution that pre-college students generate can be accomplished without the students explicitly using scientific or mathematical concepts. It is therefore important to explore how students apply science and mathematics concepts when…

Engineering career interest, especially that of young women, declines as they approach high-school graduation. We used expectancy-value theory, which emphasizes expectations for success and subjective value of experiences as antecedent factors to choice, as a framework for investigating new 9th grade soft robot design lessons. Compared to…