CAREER: BLACK-LATINX RESOURCES IN COMMUNITY-LED ENGINEERING: INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Engineering develops solutions for diverse populations and to do this well we need engineers that reflect the communities they serve. However, many groups, such as Latinx/é and Black-Latinx/é, remain severely underrepresented in the discipline. Traditionally, students from underrepresented groups have felt pressure to assimilate because their own experiences are rarely legitimized neither in the classroom nor in the profession, resulting in missed opportunities for engineering and society to benefit from the creative insights these individuals can contribute.

This leads to imperfect engineering design solutions with real-life consequences for those who are overlooked and for society at large. The education of engineers thus needs to explicitly incorporate the perspectives of students and their communities to pave the way for broadening notions of what it means to be an engineer and who can become one. All students have life experiences that they can build on as they learn engineering competencies.

However, it is not yet well understood how exactly the learning process of developing connections between experiences and engineering works. This is particularly true for learners such as Black-Latinx/é who are often made invisible, overlooked, and rarely the center of engineering practice and research. Across three geographically and demographically diverse institutional contexts, this CAREER project will develop foundational understandings of how learners make connections between engineering practices and community practices (including language and culture) and will incorporate the lessons learned into developing a community-led pedagogical approach in engineering.

The project will include learners from all races and ethnicities but also pay particular attention to Black-Latinx/é students. This project aligns with the Broadening Participation in Engineering program goal to transform learning environments for the participation and inclusion of traditionally underserved populations in STEM through research and collaborations.

This project will engage students in engineering thinking and practices (e.g., applying principles of engineering design) within three community-led courses. Students will learn ways of doing engineering as they engage in real-world examples inspired by the realities, histories and traditions of Afro-Latinx/é people. The work will draw on the rightful presence framework and theories of learning in engineering.

Through three comparative case studies of institutions implementing a community-led engineering approach focused on Black-Latinx/é communities, this project will answer three sets of questions on community practices, students’ learning and identity development, as well as learning environments: (1) What kinds of language and cultural practices in Black-Latinx/é communities are associated with engineering practices? (2) What language and cultural practices do Black-Latinx/é students, and others of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, develop in community-led engineering courses? (3) What features and resources in the distinct learning environments influence the development of the rightful presence of Black-Latinx/é students in engineering and how these resources support learners? To answer these questions, the project will build on theories related to the roles that language and culture play in how people learn and analyze responses to surveys, interviews, observations and journal entries for each of the cases.

The data will be analyzed using a variety of techniques, ranging from constant comparative approach from the grounded theory tradition to factor analysis and analysis of variance. Beyond the seven faculty members at participating institutions and 120 students directly engaging in the community-led engineering courses, the project will share the theoretical findings and design principles of the pedagogical approach with graduate students and the 300+ engineering faculty members at the partner universities, K-12 teachers, as well as the broader community.

This dissemination intends to empower faculty and teachers across the country to adapt these ideas in creating learning environments for the rightful presence of Black-Latinx students and other groups who may not see themselves reflected in STEM.

This project is funded through the Racial Equity in STEM Education activity (EDU Racial Equity). The activity supports research and practice projects that investigate how considerations of racial equity factor into the improvement of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and workforce. Awarded projects seek to center the voices, knowledge, and experiences of the individuals, communities, and institutions most impacted by systemic inequities within the STEM enterprise.

This activity aligns with NSF’s core value of supporting outstanding researchers and innovative thinkers from across the Nation's diversity of demographic groups, regions, and types of organizations. Programs across EDU contribute funds to the Racial Equity activity in recognition of the alignment of its projects with the collective research and development thrusts of the four divisions of the directorate.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.