Everyday Ingenuity in Connected Learning Spaces: Reimagining Engineering and Engineering Education for and With Latine Youth (Poster 24)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Latine and non-Latine students in the United States are less likely to study engineering than Latine students in Mexico and other Latin American countries, confirming systemic problems about the pedagogical practices in the United States that deter students from initiating and completing degrees in engineering. Researchers, policy-makers, and educators need alternative methods to create inclusive, effective programs and curricula for underrepresented populations to pursue engineering. This dissertation explores how the ingenuity in everyday practices, embodied in “make do” artifacts constructed with unconventional resources, can be leveraged in asset-based pedagogies such as Connected Learning to support a reimagining of engineering education. The research questions are: How is “everyday ingenuity” manifested in the lives of Latine youth? How do Connected Learning Spaces support ingenuity and interest-driven learning? How to co-design an engineering-focused workshop that leverages everyday ingenuity with Latinofuturism and Rasquachismo to promote Latine youth participation in engineering? Study participants include Latine middle and high school age youth in Southern California, USA. This qualitative, multi-case dissertation employs the methodology of Social Design-Based Experiments. Preliminary findings from artifacts and interviews with youth and their families show evidence of ingenuity mainly resulting from projects to repair objects, provide solutions in the home, and inspired by hobbies and interest-driven goals. Ongoing analysis of the workshop design following Participatory Design principles, show how everyday ingenuity projects can be leveraged with Latine-style influences from the Latinofuturism and Rasquachismo aesthetics to (re)imagine the future of the engineering landscape with and for Latine youth.

Author

• R. Mishael Sedas, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author