Research: Looks Like Me: Leveraging Funds of Identity to Enhance Engineering Career Pursuits in Rural/Reservation Communities

Montana State University, Bozeman MT

Investigators

Abstract

It is estimated that there will be over 600,000 engineering and engineering technology job openings between 2014 - 2024, yet the United States is not producing enough career ready college graduates to meet these projected demands. Many students are capable of becoming engineers but do not because they (a) do not understand what engineers do or (b) do not think they have the abilities needed to become an engineer; this is particularly common for underrepresented groups such as females and minorities. Diversifying the engineering workforce could result in more diverse solutions to engineering challenges. A lack of exposure to engineering in grades K-12 could limit the number of students pursuing engineering careers. This project fosters partnerships between tribal and community colleges and the surrounding rural and tribal school districts to engage rural and indigenous elementary students in place- based engineering-focused activities that will help motivate and prepare them for engineering- related careers. Professional learning communities consisting of pre and in-service elementary teachers, instructors from partner tribal and community colleges, and faculty from Montana State University will work together throughout the project with the goal of supporting teachers in the design and implementation of placed-based engineering activities to increase 3rd - 5th grade students' awareness of, interest in, and preparedness to pursue engineering related careers. Students and their families will document their views about learning, knowledge, and engineering through photo journals which will be used, along with classroom observations, to identify students' current perceptions of engineering and to develop place-based engineering- focused interventions for the students that connect to the programming and research happening at the tribal and community colleges. The citizens of rural Montana and the seven tribal reservations within Montana have a great wealth of local funds of knowledge. Children internalize these family and community funds of knowledge and resources to make meaning and define themselves, creating funds of identity that serve as a lens through which they view and absorb new information and new identities. This project explores the connections between funds of identity and engineering identity development and the mediating factors that inform this relationship. The project team engages with teachers to identify methods that can be used to identify elementary students' funds of identity and current perceptions of engineering. This information is then utilized by professional learning community members to develop place-based engineering-focused interventions for students. The research design is a multiple case study with Little Big Horn College (tribal college) and partnering reservation elementary schools as Case A and Gallatin College (community college) and partnering rural schools as Case B. Both quantitative and qualitative data are collected from individual students, teachers, and tribal and community college partners at multiple time points, allowing researchers to examine the intervention across time and contexts. Data are analyzed at the individual, with-in case, and cross-case levels to examine student, teacher, and community level impacts. This exploration of the connections between funds of identity and engineering identity in children will provide valuable insight into how educators can leverage funds of identity to create meaningful learning experiences that allow students to recognize the value of their knowledge and support their engineering identity development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.