Young children’s Perceptions of engineers before and after a summer engineering outreach course

Understanding how engineering education connects to children's conceptions of engineers will enable educators to improve ways of educating children about engineering. The purpose of this study is to survey elementary school students' perceptions of engineers before and after participating in one of two engineering outreach classes. One class introduced students to several engineering fields and the other class taught students about the design of bridges in civil engineering. The design of and analysis for this study was grounded in constructivist theory, whereby emphasis was placed on gathering students' prior conceptions and comparing and contrasting these conceptions with newly acquired knowledge. Data was collected via student drawings, interviews, and questionnaires. The data focused on students' perceptions of engineers, how they learned about engineering before and during the class, and if they were interested in being an engineer in the future. Findings from this study indicate that, by the end of the class, students generally had different ideas about engineering and engineers.