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I-Engineering

I-Engineering, grounded in participatory design-based approaches and a justice-oriented stance on learning, addresses two pressing challenges faced by middle school youth from underrepresented backgrounds: 1) opportunities to learn engineering meaningfully, and to apply it to understanding and solving real world problems (“learning”), and 2) the desire/ability to see oneself as an important contributor to engineering (“identity and agency”). The implications of these challenges matter for minoritized youth for whom equitable opportunities to learn and become in engineering have continually been unsanctioned by dominant cultural norms.

Collaborating with teachers and community educators in two cities, we developed and refined a framework and tools in support of student learning and identity and agency development in engineering. We also studied whether, how and when these approaches support identity and agency development in engineering among middle school students from underrepresented backgrounds, in the context of learning engineering practices.

Tools and materials were implemented in 37 classrooms in 4 schools to study learning sequentially over 4 years. The project has been carried out at Michigan State University, University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in collaboration with community organizations and public schools serving minoritized populations in Lansing, MI and Greensboro, NC.

This site shares these materials.

This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, grant 1502755. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Principle Investigators

• Angela Calabrese Barton, PhD., University of Michigan (angiecb@umich.edu)
• Edna Tan, PhD., University of North Carolina at Greensboro (e_tan@uncg.edu)
• Scott Calabrese Barton, PhD., Michigan State University (scb@msu.edu)

Research Team

• Aerin Benavides, PhD., Research Scientist, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
• Geling Xu, University of Michigan
• Katie Schenkel, PhD., University of Michigan
• Christina Restrepo Nazar, PhD., California State University Los Angeles
• Marcos Gonzalez, Michigan State University