Researching a Funds of Knowledge Approach to Informal Engineering Education With Latinx Middle School Youth

• In Event: Community and Cultural Wealth Approaches to Out-of-School-Time Study, Design, and Assessment

Abstract

Engineering education often employs a deficit-based approach that does not acknowledge the knowledge that youth from marginalized communities already possess. In this paper, we describe early findings from a study on an out-of-school time engineering program for Latinx middle school youth that explicitly connects engineering with youths’ “funds of knowledge” — the educational and cultural experiences, abilities, languages, and skills within their own families and communities (Moll et al., 1992; González et al., 2005; Mejia, 2014). Our initial results suggest that the program helped participants better understand the engineering design process and strengthened their engineering identity.

Authors

• Joshua Littenberg-Tobias, GBH

• Daniel Warren, Fluent Research

• Nicki Sirianni, GBH

• Evelin Garcia, Fluent Research

• Kensy Jordan, GBH

• Mary A. Haggerty, WGBH Educational Foundation