Might young makers be the engineers of the future?

Abstract

Engineers participate in the Maker movement. Some Makers do not pursue formal engineering education but both the engineering field and their own vocational advancement could readily benefit. We seek to understand Young Makers in K-12 and how might their knowledge, skills, and attitudes prepare them to pursue advanced STEM education and careers. From the Engineer of 2020 list of characteristics we highlight practical ingenuity, creativity and lifelong learning for likely opportunities to leverage the Maker experience. The mission of this research is to develop a theory, inductively grounded in data and deductively built on literature, illuminating the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of Young Makers related to pathways forward to engineering and STEM-related majors and careers. By describing their pathways to or around formal engineering education will better inform future innovations in order to improve the practical ingenuity and lifelong learning of our future engineers. Artifact elicitation interviews, based on the method of photo elicitation and critical incident technique interviews will be administered to participants. Results from the inductive and deductive analyses will be triangulated to generate a preliminary theory of Young Maker knowledge, skills, attitudes, and pathways. This theory, inductively grounded in data and deductively connected to literature, will describe aspects of Young Makers, along with how their pathways forward may intersect with engineering and STEM-related majors and careers. By describing their pathways to or around formal engineering education will better inform future innovations in order to improve the practical ingenuity and lifelong learning of our future engineers.