There is a demand for more STEM professionals. Early elementary students' conceptions about engineering can influence whether or not they explore STEM career paths and ultimately select an engineering career. This study examined the conceptions elementary students have regarding the work that engineers perform. The research questions were the…

Employers are increasingly selecting and developing employees based on skills rather than qualifications. Governments now have a growing focus on skilling, reskilling and upskilling the workforce through skills-based development rather than qualifications as a way of improving productivity. Both these changes are leading to a much stronger…

As part of a longitudinal study of the development and implementation of a middle school engineering design curriculum, we have used an occupational values subscale of the Assessing Men and Women in Engineering (AWE) project's Engineering version of the Core Survey for Middle School-Aged Participants to measure student occupational interest in…

Writing practices are seen to be essential for professional engineers, yet many engineering students and academics struggle with written communication, despite years of interventions to improve student writing. Much has been written about the importance of getting engineering students to write, but there has been a little investigation of…

The skilled technical workforce (STW) comprises workers in occupations that require significant science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) skills but not a bachelor's degree for entry. The United States had over 17 million STW workers in 2017, and is expected to be short about 3.4 million workers who are qualified for the available…

The world is rapidly changing, and the systemic shifts have the potential to affect the nature of work. To prepare the workforce, it is crucial to develop the skills that will be necessary for the unpredictable landscape of the future. Before these skills can be developed, however, they have to be identified and quantified through some form of…

Science-related careers are often considered to be less accessible by many children. More research is needed to distinguish any influences from different aspects of life so that support and/or interventions can be focused to help mitigate any disadvantage and inaccessibility. In order to gain greater understanding of constraints or influences on…

This paper details a survey study of high school counselors' awareness of and comfort with advising students in technician/technologist careers. The survey focused on careers designated as Bright Outlook by the US Department of Labor to explore familiarity with these careers, the effectiveness of the current career advising process, and…

To have software tools that facilitate the rapid development of applications and generate information systems is a requirement in a globalized world. Worldwide in the engineers training field it is basic to apply measurements and evaluations to the rapid design tools used to obtain applications faster and generate quality information systems in…

Spatial ability represents our ability to mentally arrange, rotate, and explore objects in multiple dimensions. This ability has been found to be important for engineers and engineering students. Past research has shown that many interventions can be created to boost an individual's spatial ability. In fact, past research has indicated that…

The Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior (CETYS University) is a private institution established in 1961 in Baja California, Mexico under the auspices of a group of visionary entrepreneurs committed to education. CETYS Engineering recognized in the spring of 2016 that it needed a formal organization to provide third-party, external feedback for…

The proliferation of information and divergent viewpoints in the 21st century requires an educated citizenry with the ability to critically evaluate information and make informed decisions. To meet this demand, adaptive epistemic understandings and beliefs about the nature of knowledge are needed, such as believing that scientific knowledge is…

In light of both social and ABET expectations, engineering educators need to consider how to effectively infuse engineering ethics education into current engineering curricula. This article describes our initial efforts in that realm. We considered how to improve ethics education in engineering through establishing an academic-industry…

In the USA context of the Next Generation Science Standards, elementary teachers face challenges in implementing engineering practices in their teaching due their lack of experience and training in engineering design. The paper reports about a multiple case study that examined one professional development approach to improve teachers'…

This paper examines video data of a high school robotics team to explore practices that empower youth from underrepresented groups in engineering to disrupt traditional boundaries around what engineering is and who is considered competent to participate in its practice. We analyze in-the-moment positioning work with a focus on care and maintenance…