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“Make it Be a Real School”: An Author's Perception on Community Approach for Teaching Engineering (Evaluation)

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE) Technical Session 7: Partnerships Making It Real! II

Tagged Division

Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--42327

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/42327

Download Count

120

Paper Authors

biography

Faiza Zafar Rice University

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Faiza Zafar is currently serving as the Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Rice Office of STEM Engagement (R-STEM). She has her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership with an emphasis on Math Education. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry and M.Ed. from the University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX.

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biography

Roger Ramirez Rice University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3470-296X

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I am currently the Associate Director for Mathematics and Engineering Education at the Rice Office of STEM Engagement where I co-facilitate the Applied Mathematics Program! (AMP!). I also lead a student program called Introduction to Research and Innovative Design in Engineering Academy (iRIDE).

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biography

Christina Anlynette Alston Rice University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3099-3528

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Christina works as the Associate Director for Equitable Research, Evaluation, and Grant Development at the Rice Office of STEM Engagement (R-STEM) to broaden the aim of Rice University K-12 programs to promote asset-based equitable settings for underrepresented and marginalized populations within STEM and to educate Houston-area secondary science teachers in the use of inquiry- and project-based ways for teaching science and engineering ideas.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Texas A&M - Corpus Christi, a Master of Science in Education from the University of Houston, and is a doctoral student at the University of Houston researching Urban Education.

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biography

Carolyn Nichol Rice University

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Dr. Carolyn Nichol is a Faculty Fellow in Chemistry and the Director of the Rice Office of STEM Engagement (R-STEM). R-STEM provides teacher professional development to elementary and secondary teachers in science and math content and pedagogy, while also

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Abstract

Competing with smartphones, video games, social media, and Discord for the attention of 12–14-year-old students is not an easy feat for an engineering program. Students from historically excluded backgrounds (economic, racial, or ethnic) are acutely aware of how traditional school environments and engineering programs label them as “at-risk” or academically deficient because they lack the same lived experiences and resources as dominant groups. Yet, culturally diverse students bring a plethora of experiences, skills, and strengths and are aware of the needs of their communities. As a counter-narrative, we use an asset-based community approach to form partnerships between a tier-one university, K-12 schools, teachers, and parents to foster middle school students’ interests in engineering. This paper evaluates the community approach of Introduction to Research and Innovative Design in Engineering (iRIDE), an after-school extra-curricular club followed by a summer academy, with two guiding questions: 1. How are student participants’ voices utilized to align engineering activities with their grade-level curriculum and future career plans? and 2. How do the facilitators engage the students in program activities to ensure a community-based approach? Participation in the program was open to all 6th-8th grade students from selected schools irrespective of their background knowledge. Each year (from 2019-2022, excluding 2020), approximately 30 students from three middle schools participated. This study constituted multi-year student and facilitator input using a non-experimental approach: 40 student participants provided qualitative feedback via Google Forms, while the facilitators participated in semi-structured interviews at the end of the summer. Using a grounded theory approach, we evaluated the program to better comprehend its potential influence on the students in instilling the desire to pursue engineering to solve community problems, identify students' level of engagement in activities, and communicate the program's successes and challenges. We found that the summer hands-on Capstone Project allowed students to bring in their lived experiences to collaboratively determine problems in their community, brainstorm and develop solutions, and present their findings to community stakeholders, including parents and teachers. Through this experience and extensive facilitator and peer support, the students realized that "engineering is for everyone no matter their background." The program’s curriculum sparked an interest in future engineering careers by teaching students that "engineering is fun" and through the hands-on activities, they "learned to have grit" while working with students from comparable backgrounds. Facilitators modified activities based on students' engagement and recognized that students feel more comfortable learning from mistakes when there is less emphasis on marks. Thus, these practical insights can provide others with information to lead projects with similar community-focused strategies to make lasting impacts on students' engineering trajectories.

Zafar, F., & Ramirez, R., & Alston, C. A., & Nichol, C. (2023, June), “Make it Be a Real School”: An Author's Perception on Community Approach for Teaching Engineering (Evaluation) Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42327

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