Elementary school students' conceptions of engineers: A preliminary study

The purpose of the study was to investigate elementary school students' conceptions of engineers and to examine how students' cognitive conceptions vary by gender. A Chinese-version of Draw-an-Engineer Test was developed to observe students' conceptions of engineers. 150 fifth graders at an elementary school in Taiwan participated in the study. The results showed that more that 90 percent of students perceived that engineers were male. In the category of engineer type, almost 90 percent of students considered that engineers were architecture-engineering-related jobs. The chi-square analysis also revealed that a significant difference on engineer stereotype and engineer type existed between male and female students' drawings.