What can a child's experiences tell us about engineering education activities?

Abstract

This paper presents the emergent findings from a current PhD study exploring children's experiences of 'active' engineering education. The study aims to develop a deeper understanding of the outcomes of participation in such activities for children in rural schools, and collects data from the first person perspective to enable this. The literature suggests that career aspirations may be formed by children as young as 8 years, however current debate largely overlooks the experiences of children at this age. The study presented takes a qualitative methodological stance and, adopting an approach based upon grounded theory, uses observations and semi-structured interview data to analyse participation in an engineering activity. The emergent findings suggest that many sources inform a child's knowledge of engineering, contributing to their view of engineering; it is a child's a priori perceptions of engineering and engineers which ultimately 'frames' how they experience organised engineering education activities. Simply, a child's view of their engineering suitability is influenced by a range of factors prior to formal engineering education being introduced. Formal engineering education activities have a role, but often these simply reinforce previously held beliefs. The implications of this finding are of great importance for the field.

Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences
Additional Information: Copyright SEFI 2017 - All Rights Reserved
Event Title: 45th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, SEFI 2017
Event Type: Other
Event Dates: 2017-09-18 - 2017-09-21
Uncontrolled Keywords: Aspirations,Group interviews,Primary school,Qualitative,Engineering(all),Education
ISBN: 9789899887572
Last Modified: 29 Jan 2024 08:02
Date Deposited: 08 Dec 2017 15:05
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Conference contribution
Published Date: 2017-09-21
Authors: Broadbent, Rebecca (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-8160-5030)

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