A Comparative Case Study Investigating Indigenous and Rural Elementary Students’ Conceptions of Community Engineering

Multiple reform documents call for school-aged children to learn about engineering as a way of developing engineering-literate adults. Children’s attitudes towards and understandings of engineering are influenced by their conceptions of what engineering is. This multiple case study uses photo novellas to investigate primary-grade students’conceptualizations of engineering in their rural or reservation communities. Students from four schools completed similar photo novella assignments where they took pictures of what they considered engineering within their communities and further described those photos in writing or verbally. Photo novellas were analyzed using an a priori codebook to identify themes within and across cases. Every participant across all schools identified tangible engineering artifacts, while fewer students provided examples that represented engineering as systems or processes. Students from reservation schools were more likely to describe the purpose of their engineering examples and describe engineering as “helping.” Students in rural schools were more likely to include descriptions of math and science connections in their engineering examples. Rural students also used possessive language when identifying examples of engineering. This paper provides empirical data for a research-based activity to elicit young students’ ideas of engineering with attention to place-based learning. Findings indicate that photo novellas can be used as a tool for identifying children’s nuanced perspectives of engineering. As the engineering community continues to develop career pathways for students from rural places and Indigenous communities, it is important to recognize the nuanced perspectives different rural and Indigenous populations offer to the field.