Engineers in the Classroom: Their Influence on African‐American Students’ Perceptions of Engineering

Abstract

A Draw an Engineer Test was used to capture the perceptions of engineering held by two similar groups of 6th grade African‐American students. Forty‐four students who had graduate level engineers in their classrooms during a prior school year as part of a GK‐12 project were matched to 44 students who had not. Matching criteria included race, gender, and academic standing. Using perceptions of common engineering artifacts, fields, tasks and processes as measures, student perceptions were quantified using a Draw an Engineer Test Scoring Guide. Additional descriptive analysis was also conducted. Control group students’ perceptions centered on engineering as physical work and portrayed engineers primarily in construction or building trades. Experimental group students were more likely to perceive engineering as involving mental tasks such as designing, presenting and experimenting. Experimental group students also displayed greater awareness and understanding of various engineering fields.

Elementary Students' Perceived Images of Engineers

“…Drawing is a comfortable and age-appropriate language for children. Children can express their emotion and personality in a personally meaningful way (Oware, 2008;Thompson and Lyons, 2008). According to Smith et al (2003), "children's drawings provide a more complete and expressive representation of their experiences than might be obtained through more traditional verbal interview methods or paper and pencil tests.…”

“…Lyons and Thompson (2006) used DAE Scoring Guide and interviews to measure sixth graders' perceptions about engineers and engineering. Thompson and Lyons (2008) investigated 6 th grade AfricanAmerican student perceptions of engineering. They used DAET Scoring Guide which is a numerical coding system to measure perceptions of engineering.…”

“…The Draw-a-Scientist-Test (DAST) has been well known tool to measure student perceptions of scientists and science, and has been valued as a valid and reliable tool for assessing students' perceptions of science and scientists (Chambers, 1983;Chiang and Guo, 1996;Finson, 2002;Finson et al, 1995;Losh et al, 2008;Newton and Newton, 1992;Newton and Newton, 1998;Song and Kim, 1999;Thompson and Lyons, 2008).…”

“…The Draw an Engineer-Korean version (DAE-K) was developed based on DAE (Fralick et al, 2009;Thompson and Lyons, 2008;Yap et al, 2003), DAS (Chambers, 1983;Finson et al, 1995;Fralick et al, 2009;Mead and Metraux, 1957), and Song and Kim (1999)'s instruments. DAE-K consists of two domains of students' perceived images of engineers.…”

“…Research has showed that the perceptions children hold about STEM impact their learning and future career decision (Buldu, 2006;Knight and Cunningham, 2004;Losh et al, 2008;Newton and Newton 1998;Oware, 2008;Thompson and Lyons, 2008). Looking at the research on images of scientists, the images of scientists that students hold are formed at very early years of elementary school; moreover, those images remain stable through high school and college (Jung et al, 2012;Lyons and Thompson, 2006;Newton, 1992, 1998;Rahm and Charbonneau, 1997).…”