Making the Invisible Visible: Unveiling Multicompetent Learners' Language and Cultural Resources in Engineering Design (Poster 11)

• In Event: Attending to the Crevasse Between Equity- and Content-Oriented Goals in Science Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Objectives. Science and engineering paradoxically are tasked with creating knowledge and solutions. Yet their practitioners are rarely equipped to consider the competencies embedded in the diverse population of the United States (Nelson, 2021). As a result, the question of with whom and for whom the fields generate ideas and solutions becomes imperative. To move towards this goal means that society and STEM need to embrace the differences within our populations beyond the superficial inclusion of diversity. This poster investigates the issue of learning and participation in engineering among Multicompetent Learners (people who live between languages and/or cultures), particularly Latinx engineering undergraduates. What is not well understood is the impact of learners' diverse practices into the kinds of solutions that get solved and the approaches to solve them.

Perspectives. Drawing on the perspectives of justice in engineering and science (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2019, 2020; Costanza-Chock, 2020; Morales‐Doyle, 2017) and situated learning (Brown et al., 1989; Greeno et al., 1996; Pea, 1993), this quasi-experimental study investigates the relationship between language and cognition in engineering design. The study examines the ways Latinx engineering students engage with their communities ways of knowing and speaking when designing solutions.

Data Sources and Methods. Using a mixed methods parallel convergent design (Creswell & Clark, 2017), this study investigates the influence of language condition (both English and Spanish vs. English-only) in activating the sociocultural sensitivities of Latinx undergraduates (and their communities) in engineering design. In addition to the language conditions, students engaged in two phases of design delimited by a prompt to consider culture and language in their work. Participants included 26 Latinx undergraduates in engineering who grew up in the United States in Spanish-speaking households. The researcher collected students’ responses to an engineering task about designing a toaster oven. The study included an analysis of variance of feature-ideas in the design and domain analysis of participants’ responses to the interview and to the engineering task (Miles et al., 2014; Saldaña, 2016).

Results. The results suggest that the language condition (English-only vs. English and Spanish) influence the quantity and level of ideas generated in the early stages of the design process. The results of this work document a pattern of ways of speaking that allowed students to access cognitive resources in these initial phases of design. This study also found that the language condition became an implicit instruction for incorporating culture and language features in thinking about solutions while explicit instruction seemed to be beneficial for students across both conditions.

Significance. This work highlights how centering the cultural and linguistic diversity of minoritized communities may lead to previously untapped insights for creative and socially just designs in engineering. This work highlights the need to engage in engineering learning through instructional strategies that treat students and their communities’ ways of knowing and speaking as valuable resources for learning and engaging in engineering. At the same time, these resources pave the way for broadening notions of what it means to be an engineer and who can become one.

Author

• Greses Perez, Tufts University
  Presenting Author