In response to increasing demands for engineers, engineering has become a more prominent feature of K-12 education. Additionally, engineering and engineering related topics have become part of many state’s standards, further encouraging this growth. Over the last two decades, programs such as Project Lead the Way, Engineering is Elementary, and others have allowed many K-12 schools to incorporate engineering into their offerings. At the same time, many universities, corporations and other youth organizations have offered opportunities for students to learn about engineering outside of the classroom in informal settings. These programs include camps, after school programs, mentoring programs and other programmatic offerings.
Understanding how these experiences affect students by investigating the effect on students’ engineering identity may allow for a better understanding of how to support the development of strong engineering identities in pre-college students. Engineering identity is one factor tied to recruitment and retention of engineering students, so fostering an engineering identity in pre-college students may help meet the growing demand for engineers. In order to understand the current state of research, a literature review was conducted focused on pre-college engineering identity. This literature review identified existing literature from engineering education and STEM education. The findings from this literature review are used to propose new directions for research.
Abigail Clark is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio Northern University. She holds a PhD in Engineering Education from The Ohio State University. She also holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio State and Ohio Northern University. Prior to her time at OSU, she worked at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. Her research interests include pre-college engineering education, informal engineering education, and identity development.
Dr. Rachel Louis Kajfez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University. She earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from Ohio State and earned her Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech. Her research interests focus on the intersection between motivation and identity, first-year engineering programs, mixed methods research, and innovative approaches to teaching. She is the principal investigator for the Research on Identity and Motivation in Engineering (RIME) Collaborative.
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