Exploring the gender differences in how children develop early interest and understanding in engineering can provide useful information for the ongoing efforts to address the low numbers of women who pursue engineering careers. By the time girls reach middle school, they are already much less likely to be interested in STEM careers than boys are, especially in fields that are math-intensive such as physics and engineering. This lack of interest has been shown to be commonly connected to two things: a narrow, inaccurate view of the engineering profession, and the perceived misalignment between what engineers do and what girls value in future careers.

Informal learning environments, where learners spend a great deal of time and have more freedom in choosing the topics they study and immerse themselves in, have been shown to be powerful and transformative contexts in which young people cultivate lifelong interest and understanding around STEM topics over time. Institutions for informal science learning, such as science and technology centers, are wildly popular and visited by over 50 million people in the United States every year. These settings often allow for parents and children to collaboratively engage in STEM learning, which may be particularly important in fields like engineering where parents have been shown to play a critical role in career choice.

The Gender Research on Adult-child Discussions within Informal ENgineering environmenTs (GRADIENT) project seeks to explore the development of early engineering interest and understanding for girls by closely examining parent-child conversation within museum-based informal engineering learning settings. In particular, the study context focuses on a pre-school program where parents and children can play with engineering-focused toys and engage in different aspects of the engineering design process. The study investigates how the structure of the activities and the conversations between parents and children during these experiences can support or inhibit the development of engineering interest and understanding for young girls. Findings from the study will seek to highlight productive ways of fostering early engineering learning that can be informative for both STEM educators and parents.

Head Start on Engineering (HSE) is a collaborative, NSF-funded research and practice project designed to develop and refine a theoretical model of early childhood, engineering-related interest development. The project focuses on Head Start families with four-year-old children from low-income communities and is being carried out collaboratively by researchers, science center educators, and a regional Head Start program. The ultimate goal of the HSE initiative is to advance the understanding of and capacity to support early engineering interest development for young learners, especially for children from low-income families and traditionally underserved communities. Building on prior work that examined the conversations of parents and young children engaged in engineering design (Dorie, Carella, & Svarovsky, 2014; 2015), the beginning stages of HSE explore the perceptions, interactions, and interest development of young children and their parents while engaged in activities that incorporate elements of the engineering design process. We specifically focus on parent-child interactions because of role that early interest (Maltese & Tai, 2010) and parents (Mannon & Schreuders, 2007) play in the occupational choices of populations traditionally underrepresented in STEM (Eccles et al., 1999).

HSE project launched in October 2016 and began offering programming and resources for families in December. For the first two years of the project, the team has worked with teachers at one Head Start location to plan, gather input from families, and test new programs and activities. In the fall of 2016, the team offered two full-day professional development workshops for staff, during which teachers learned about engineering, explored examples of engineering and design in their own lives, tested new activities for families and young children, and provided input on future programs. In January 2017, a group of Head Start families was recruited to participate in five months of program and research activities, including parent nights, home visits, take-home activity kits, and a field trip to OMSI. A second iteration of the project commenced in the fall of 2017, with another cohort of family participants engaging in programming starting in January 2018.

In recent years, Making – a do-it-yourself, grassroots approach to designing and constructing real things through creativity, problem-solving, and tool use – has received increasing attention as a fruitful vehicle for introducing young people to the excitement of science and engineering and to career skills in these fields. Maker Faires attract hundreds and thousands of people to engage in Making activities every year, and the popularity of these events, as well as the number of museums and libraries that are beginning to provide opportunities for the public to regularly engage in these types of activities, are skyrocketing. However, Maker programs tend to draw audiences that are predominantly white, middle class, male, well educated, and strongly interested in science, despite the fact that the practices of Making can be found within all communities and cultures.

Making Connections, a multi-year research and development study, is developing and studying new ways to engage a broader audience in meaningful Maker experiences. This study draws and builds on existing theoretical frameworks to examine how community engagement techniques can be used to co-design and implement culturally-relevant marketing, activities, and events focused on Making that attract families from underrepresented audiences and ultimately engage them in meaningful informal STEM learning. The project is also exploring new approaches in museums’ cross-institutional practices that can strengthen the quality of their community-engagement. Ultimately, the findings from Making Connections have the potential to transform how children begin to cultivate a lifelong interest in engineering at a young age, which may ultimately encourage more young people of color to pursue engineering careers in the future.