Building Technical Capital in Community College Technology Education

In spite of targeted efforts to expand diversity in the engineering workforce, only marginal improvements have been made in diversifying engineering education. Today, the majority of students who enroll and graduate with a bachelor’s degree in engineering are white males. To meet the quantity and quality of engineers the nation needs, educators need to do two things. First, they must “tap all talent”, that is, attract a broad group of individuals who are presently under-represented in engineering. Second, educators must restructure engineering education so that students experience early in their training what engineers do on a daily basis. Because over forty percent of all four-year engineering graduates began their introductory studies in the community college, pre-baccalaureate preparation has drawn close attention. Women, racial/ethnic minorities, and low income students are well-represented in community colleges, but only a small number of these populations graduate with associate’s degrees in engineering and engineering technologies. Research has shown that an interest in engineering as a career impacts persistence. Yet women and other underrepresented students are less likely than their white male peers to have been socialized to do hands-on activities or encouraged to use toys, tools, or gadgets that might promote their interest in engineering.First generation and low income community college students are underrepresented in engineering because they face barriers to entering and completing an engineering degree in four-year colleges. Research indicates that the majority of engineering students come from at least a middle-class background. Thus, for first-generation and economically disadvantaged students class is an obstacle because they lack the middle-class cultural capital needed to succeed academically.The research question for this study is the following: What is the role of problem-oriented pedagogical strategies in developing the professional identity and technical capital among community college students in advanced technological education? In this paper, we argue that lack of cultural capital can be mitigated by helping community college students acquire a professional identity. Furthermore, in addition to cultural capital, we argue that success in technology and engineering education also requires technical capital, which is experience with “tinkering,” manipulating tools, doing hands-on work, and knowing the process of solving problems that require technical solutions. Thus, we argue that to increase diversity in technology and engineering education and careers, programs should help students acquire a professional identity as well as technical capital. To understand how students might acquire a professional identity as well as technical capital, this study investigated the perspectives of students enrolled in a technician level engineering program that incorporated well-structured and ill-structured problems at a community college. The technology program at North-West Community College (NWCC) is a two-year program. In the first year, students learn fundamentals and basic low-tech skills. The learning takes place in courses that incorporate projects with well-structured problems, often with both a theoretical classroom and a lab component. In the second year, students engage in ill-structured problem solving in their technically sophisticated capstone projects that integrate the principles that students have learned during the first year and continue to learn and practice in the second year. The findings suggest that scaffolding experiences, that is, moving from very well-structured problems to ill-structured problems, allows students to develop technical capital, to form professional identities, and to succeed in pre-baccalaureate engineering education.