Bagiati, A., & Evangelou, D., & Dobbs-Oates, J. (2011, June), Exposure to Early Engineering: A Parental Perspective  Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2--17973

\bibitem{asee_peer_17973}
  Bagiati, A., \& Evangelou, D., \& Dobbs-Oates, J. (2011, June), \emph{Exposure to Early Engineering: A Parental Perspective}
  Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Vancouver, BC.
  10.18260/1-2--17973

Aikaterini Bagiati, Demetra Evangelou, and Jennifer Dobbs-Oates.  "Exposure to Early Engineering: A Parental Perspective".  2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC, 2011, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2011.  https://peer.asee.org/17973 Internet.  29 Jun, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_17973}
  Aikaterini Bagiati, Demetra Evangelou, and Jennifer Dobbs-Oates.
  "Exposure to Early Engineering: A Parental Perspective".
  \emph{2011 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Vancouver, BC, 2011, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2011.
  https://peer.asee.org/17973 Internet.  29 Jun, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_17973
author = "Aikaterini Bagiati, Demetra Evangelou, and Jennifer Dobbs-Oates"
title = "Exposure to Early Engineering: A Parental Perspective"
booktitle = "2011 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2011"
month = "June"
address = "Vancouver, BC"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/17973}
number = {10.18260/1-2--17973}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -               Exposure to Early Engineering– a Parental PerspectiveEngineering thinking is a new area of exploration within engineering education that is based onthe developmental engineering hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, young children’sexploratory, inquisitive, and creative behaviors resemble traits that are highly desirable inengineering. Although science, technology, and math, three of the four disciplines comprisingSTEM, have an established presence in the early childhood education curriculum, when it comesto engineering in early education, there is a lack of understanding of what engineering is, and ofhow it can be integrated into early education. Attention to preschoolers’ exploration ofengineering-relevant concepts has recently increased and this knowledge will be useful ininforming and guiding current efforts to create developmentally appropriate engineering-relevantcurricula. A way to investigate the preschoolers’ engineering concept development is byobserving children’s instances of exploratory learning. The concept of exploratory learning is notnew when it comes to preschoolers’ education. Children often develop new knowledge whilebeing exposed to, interacting with and exploring familiar or unfamiliar artifacts or variousrepresentations of them. Artifacts are essential to engineering education since they can stimulatea large amount of hypotheses with respect to the origin, the design, the construction and thefunction of each artifact. Furthermore artifacts surround children from birth, so a level ofexposure and interaction exists on an everyday basis. Although the urgent necessity ofunderstanding developmental engineering and attempting early exposure has been acknowledgedby scholars, not all preschoolers’ parents seem to be sharing the same opinion. This is a mixed methods study of the perceptions of the parents of preschoolers about theirchildren’s exposure to engineering through formal and informal interactions with a set ofartifacts. Thirty-nine children, aged 4-5, attending 6 Midwestern preschools, and their parents,participated in the study. Children came from families of different socioeconomic status. Threeof the schools where data were collected were university-based preschools, while the other threewere Headstart programs. Parents completed a three-part questionnaire. The first part containedquestions that provided demographic information; the second part contained questions regardingspecific artifacts existence at home and the children’s mode and frequency of interaction withthem. The third part contained open-ended questions regarding the parents’ attitudes and beliefsabout engineering, their beliefs regarding children’s early exposure to engineering concepts andcontent at the preschool age, and the modes parents might use to expose their children toengineering concepts. Findings show that parents of different socioeconomic status differ bothin their opinion of the necessity of children’s early exposure to engineering, and in theireveryday use of the artifacts to expose preschoolers to engineering related concepts. When itcomes to the preschoolers’ modes of exploring or using the artifacts, they do not significantlyvary between children of different socioeconomic status.
AU  - Aikaterini Bagiati
AU  - Demetra Evangelou
AU  - Jennifer Dobbs-Oates
CY  - Vancouver, BC
DA  - 2011/06/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Exposure to Early Engineering: A Parental Perspective
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/17973
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--17973
ER  -