Imbalance of power: A case study of a middle school mixed-gender engineering team

This paper presents a mixed methods case study of a middle school mixed-gender team participating in an after-school environmental engineering workshop. The curriculum was part of a STEM program in which youth were engaged in a studio approach to design-based engineering. Data includes video of a girl-boy team working together (both 6th graders) tasked with creating a working model of a solar car. Additional data was provided through interview transcripts of the girl and boy, along with pre- and posttest results of their learning of key scientific concepts. Discourse and observational analyses based on videotape documentation reveal power imbalances in the working relationship of the pair favoring the boy. These imbalances are most apparent in the amount of time that each spends handling the engineering equipment and in the nature of the dialogue, which is characterized in large part by directives rather than by constructive collaboration. These imbalances appear to reflect longstanding societal gender norms and may provide clues as to how females may feel excluded from engineering activities and why so few females enter the field of engineering. Recommendations for facilitation, instructional designs, and assessments are made with the goal of fostering equitable and harmonious mixed-gender collaborations in engineering activities.