2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Pre-college students’ Parents’ perspectives on education play a crucial role in their children’s learning outcomes and future development. While the importance of engineering education has received attention from instructional design and school systems, parent-related factors remain unclear. Engineering for US All (e4usa) aims to provide well-designed engineering courses for high school students who seek to make engineering deeply and meaningfully accessible to the world. Moreover, e4usa encourages partnerships through communities and schools, allowing parents to participate with and better assist their children. This work-in-progress paper attempts to understand parents’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors (KAB) in engineering and engineering education, exploring potential opportunities to translate parents’ positive mindsets into actionable support.

The study conducted three semi-structured interviews with four parents whose children were enrolled in e4usa courses in 2022. After transcribing the interview content, the first two authors conducted qualitative analysis with two rounds of coding. In the first round, we used KAB as the coding category. After discussion, an additional code, “scenario,” was added during the second round of coding to help fully capture what parents value.

The preliminary results show that parents have basic ideas about engineering. Some of them have exposure due to their family background and have constructed an image of their child as a diligent and talented student. They also view their children’s involvement in engineering education positively, as it benefits their college applications and career choices. However, as engineering courses do not currently count towards Advanced Placement (AP) credits, parents express concerns about balancing the time to take engineering courses and fulfill perceived AP requirements for college admission. Parents’ actions are limited by a lack of information and connections with resources, but they still try to enhance their children’s engineering education by locating teachers, identifying relevant courses, and promoting family connections. Our next step is to conduct a broader interview among parents and explore potential methods for translating parents’ knowledge and attitudes into actions. For example, we could design informational sessions for parents, create engineering activities in which parents can participate, and link local network resources in engineering. This study aims to enhance parental involvement in engineering education by providing actionable insights and recommendations, ultimately supporting schools and policymakers in creating a more welcoming and effective educational environment.