Remaking Exclusionary Definitions of Engineering and Design: Centering Minoritized Youth Assets in Maker Education (Poster 2)

• In Event: University-Community Engagement as a Strategy for Dismantling Racial Injustice and Co-Constructing Educational Possibilities

Abstract

Millions of dollars have been invested in efforts to address racial and ethnic inequities and “broaden participation” in engineering and design (E&D), often through efforts to increase interest and awareness in engineering (under the assumption that students’ lack of these things is to blame) or through eradicating specific harmful blockages in educational pathways (such as misogynistic or coded racial messaging about belonging) (Author, 2021). Despite substantial investment, the systematic exclusion of people from E&D fields based on race, ethnicity, and gender continues unabated. We suggest that, rather than searching for better ways to change youth and their participation to fit into traditional views of engineering, we need a paradigm shift to alter the field of E&D itself to center the long ignored ingenuity of women and communities of color as core to a new definition of E&D (Medin & Bang, 2014). We present a design research study grounded in maker education and a university-community partnership that places young people of color’s assets at the forefront of their educational experience in E&D.

Our approach draws from asset-based conceptions of maker education (Gravel et al., 2021), which see the varied interests, skills, and knowledges of youth as primary to visions of E&D learning (Calabrese Barton et al., 2021). We apply a social cultural perspective on learning and employ the constructs of figured worlds (Holland et al., 2001) and practice-linked identities (Nasir & Hand, 2008) to examine shifts in participation and expressions of agency over time.

We present a case study of an individual, who we call Cydney, and her participation in a six-month, weekly maker class within her sixth grade class. Cydney was a young woman of color from a low income family who initially distanced herself from identities of “scientist” or “maker,” but continued to create a sophisticated “pet robot” that integrated a microcontroller, lights, motors, and significant aesthetic and mechanical craft elements. Data take the form of field notes, written after weekly sessions, along with analytic memos that expanded and reflected upon in-the-moment notes.

We use case study methods to analyze and present two vignettes (Yin, 1994), one early in the process and one later on, where Cydney made identity bids in the context of her project work. We consider how she brought in her own knowledge and skill into the design space to make her project personally and socially meaningful. We interpret these moves as her creating new possibilities for the figured world of STEM, and her own identities in that world.

The contribution of this presentation is the qualitative analysis of how an asset-based pedagogy – one that foregrounded Cydney’s particular and idiosyncratic interests, knowledges, and skills – made space for a creation of new figured world of STEM to emerge in which personal goals and identities could coexist with the goals and meanings of STEM in the formal classroom setting.

Authors

• Lee Michael Martin, University of California - Davis

• J.C. Leapman, University of California - Davis