2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

To address the rise of homeschooling and parents’ role as an engineering educator, this study explored how to support homeschool parents and children in engineering concepts, practices, and processes within their home environment. More specifically, through participation in a local National Science Foundation iCorps program, we revised four previously developed MAKEngineering kits to target the needs of homeschool families garnered through user-designed interviews.

Twenty-six homeschool families received two kits and were asked to provide feedback via a survey and an optional follow-up interview. To date, ten homeschool parents completed the survey, seven of which were also interviewed. We analyzed the survey results using descriptive statistics and the interviews by identifying patterns in responses.

Survey results highlighted alignment between the kits and components homeschool parents consider when purchasing STEM-focused kits, such that kits included all needed materials, connected to the real world, and encouraged further exploration of the topic. In addition, interview results underscored three big ideas. First, kits provide children with opportunities to think critically, be creative, experience failures, and learn about engineers and the design process. Second, parents used the kits in their homeschool curriculum as “fun” project-based activities to support and enhance connections to science, writing, and math concepts. Third, parents adapted the kits to meet the learning needs and abilities of their children.

The initial results of this study highlight the potential of the STEM kits to support homeschool parents and children not only in engineering concepts, practices, and processes, but also interdisciplinary concepts and skills through using engineering as a foundation. The results also point to parents’ ability to diversify the kits to target their children’s learning needs and make connections to other disciplines in support of their curriculum.