Engineering as a career choice in rural appalachia: sparking and sustaining interest

• Autores: Holly M. Matusovich, Cheryl A. Carrico, Marie C. Paretti, Matthew A. Boynton
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 33, no. Extra 1 (Parte B), 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Current Trends in K-12 Engineering Education), págs. 463-475
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Research shows that interest is often reported as a primary reason for career choice selection among majority students butnot necessarily for underrepresented students. At the same time, research focused on rural Appalachian youth in Virginiaand Tennessee (students underrepresented in higher education broadly and specifically within engineering) has showninterest as preferentially important in engineering fields though not in other fields. To better understand how interest inengineering is sparked and sustained among Appalachian students, we used a qualitative multi-case study approach to firstcompare interest in engineering and healthcare fields among high school students and then to compare high school andcollege student interest in engineering careers. For high school students, our findings reveal interest sparks in engineeringwere more likely to be associated with organized experiences, while health care interests were primarily associated withpersonal experiences. We also found an association between engineering interests and a preference for math and scienceclasses, but the same association did not exist for interests in health care fields, despite the potentially equivalent math/science intensity of these career fields. With regard to interest development phases among high school students, individualrather than situational interests tend to be associated with intention toward engineering majors, whereas the opposite wastrue for healthcare fields. For college engineering students, we identified a greater balance between individual andsituational interest than in the high school sample of students interestedin an engineeringcareer. College students were alsomore likely than high school students to indicate a personal experience as sparking his or her interest in engineering than anorganized activity. Finally, though we compared two case sites in rural Appalachia, our findings revealed commonality ininterest levels and sparksacross sites.In combination, these findings haveimplications for designing interventionsintendedto spark interests in engineering such that the interests can also be sustained.