Cookie-Jar Alarms: An Analysis of First-Grade Students’ Gendered Conceptions of Engineers following a Programming Design Task
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
2.1. Nature of Engineering
2.2. Students’ Conceptions of Engineering
2.3. Effects of Engineering Curriculum
3. Methodology
3.1. Theoretical Framework
3.2. Participants
3.3. Curricular Intervention
3.4. Data Collection
3.5. Data Analysis
4. Results
4.1. Changing Gendered Conceptions of Engineers
4.2. Changing Conceptions of Engineering Work
4.3. Effectiveness of the Intervention
4.4. Interest and Engineering Identity
5. Discussion
6. Limitations and Future Research
7. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A. Interview Protocol
- [Looking at the first drawing] What can you tell me about this drawing?
- What is the engineer doing?
- How did you know or learn that?
- [If the gender is not mentioned by pronouns, then ask: Is the engineer a boy or a girl?]
- [Looking at your second drawing] What can you tell me about this drawing?
- What is the engineer doing now?
- [If the gender is not mentioned by pronouns, then ask: Is the engineer a boy or a girl?]
- [Looking at your two drawings side-by-side] How are these drawings different?
- What made you change your mind about what engineers do?
- Do you think you are an engineer? Why, or why not?
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Preconceptions | Post-Conceptions | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Male n = 7 | Female n = 8 | Total n = 15 | Male n = 7 | Female n = 8 | Total n = 15 | Pre/Post Comparison n = 15 | |
Engineers Are Male | 7 (100%) | 3 (38%) | 10 (67%) | 7 (100%) | 0 (0%) | 7 (47%) | p = 0.462 |
Engineers Use Technology (Robots) | 0 (0%) | 5 (33%) | 5 (33%) | 2 (13%) | 6 (40%) | 8 (53%) | p = 0.462 |
| | | |
Girl 3 | Girl 6 | ||
Pre-drawing: “My dad is building a rocket.” Post-drawing: “They’re building a robot.” Why the change: “Because there’s a lot of kinds of engineers.” | Pre-drawing: “That is the car that he’s fixing.” Post-drawing: “There’s two engineer partners…and they work together. They’re building a robot and their mom’s saying, “No, stop! You’re making a mess!” Why the change: “Because I wanted to kind of take turns.” | ||
| | | |
Girl 8 | Boy 1 | ||
Pre-drawing: “I drawed a robot that they were building.” Post-drawing: “I’m testing it…You just twist something and then candy falls out.” Why the change: “It’s really interesting how it works.” | Pre-drawing: “He’s fixing a car.” Post-drawing: “He’s fixing a robot.” Why the change: “I thought he would be working on a bigger thing, and he would be working on not a smaller thing.” |
| | | |
Girl 2 | Girl 11 | ||
Pre-drawing: “That’s a real engineer…making a robot.” | Pre-drawing: “She’s helping make the train go.” | ||
Post-drawing: “That was me when I was a little girl, I want to be an engineer when I grows up.” | Post-drawing: “She’s helping robots…like when they need more batteries and stuff.” | ||
Why the change: “An engineer fixes things and if it doesn’t work, she will try it again.” | Why the change: “Because I learned…engineers, like, make stuff.” | ||
| | | |
Girl 12 | Girl 15 | ||
Pre-drawing: “She’s fixing a robot, and her hair’s kind of going out crazy because she’s doing crazy things…I’ve been watching some movies that had…robots.” | Pre-drawing: “An engineer…fixes things and wants to make something new that no…other people, ever did…This is adult.” | ||
Post-drawing: “My engineer is fixing a robot. They can fix anything.” | Post-drawing: “This is the child making her own robot.” | ||
Why the change: “[I learned] that engineers make alarming systems…and if someone feels the something then it goes off, like a fire alarm.” | Why the change: “Because they can make something too…and when they grow up, they can make more stuff out of their imagination.” |
Interview Survey Question n = 15 | Significance Level | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Engineering Identity X Gender | Male 1 of 7 (14%) | Female 6 of 8 (75%) | Total 7 of 15 (47%) | p = 0.041 * |
Engineering Identity X Knowledge of Engineering | rs = 0.56 | p = 0.030 * |
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Mitchell, A.; Lott, K.H.; Tofel-Grehl, C. Cookie-Jar Alarms: An Analysis of First-Grade Students’ Gendered Conceptions of Engineers following a Programming Design Task. Educ. Sci. 2022, 12, 110. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12020110
Mitchell A, Lott KH, Tofel-Grehl C. Cookie-Jar Alarms: An Analysis of First-Grade Students’ Gendered Conceptions of Engineers following a Programming Design Task. Education Sciences. 2022; 12(2):110. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12020110
Chicago/Turabian StyleMitchell, April, Kimberly H. Lott, and Colby Tofel-Grehl. 2022. "Cookie-Jar Alarms: An Analysis of First-Grade Students’ Gendered Conceptions of Engineers following a Programming Design Task" Education Sciences 12, no. 2: 110. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12020110