Engineering identity and persistence: developing an integrated conceptual framework for understanding students’ choice of engineering education and careers

• In Event: Fostering engineering identity and persistence among high school students at a global scale: evaluating the GE Foundation Next Engineers Program

Proposal

As the demand for engineering professionals has grown, so has the research dedicated to understanding whether and how students develop an interest for and identity within engineering fields of study as well as what may influence students’ persistence within the field. Much of the research focuses on identifying specific demographic and contextual factors that are likely to predict students’ engagement in engineering fields of study including gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, academic achievement, and school environment (Carnasciali et al., 2013; Diefes-Dux, 2012; Milner et al., 2014). However, few of these studies have taken place outside the Global North. Furthermore, while this research helps identify groups that may be more, or less, likely to enter and remain within the field of engineering, results do not always lead directly to pathways that can actively attract, engage, and support students into an engineering career (Osborne et al., 2003). More recently, studies have begun to focus on identifying a broader range of factors that influence the development of a students’ engineering identity and support their sense of belonging within the engineering field, including the importance of exposure to engineering ideas before formal STEM education, the existence of role models within and outside the classroom, peer and family support, and opportunities to connect to and experience the engineering profession (Morelock et al., 2017). Building a deeper understanding of how these factors impact young people in relation to their pathway into engineering and what types of interventions may serve to strengthen these factors is essential for connecting more youth to engineering, particularly those who are underrepresented in the field. This presentation provides an in-depth analysis of how engineering identity and persistence have been documented within the literature and how these constructs have been measured, or neglected, across different educational and geographical settings. Building on this foundation, we outline the theory of change embedded in the Next Engineers: Engineering Academy program and present our conceptual framework motivating the Next Engineers research approach.

Authors

• Caitlín Rose Dailey, FHI 360

• Elizabeth Adelman, FHI 360