Eliciting Yucatan peninsula teachers' images of engineering and engineers

Abstract

Data were collected using the Draw an Engineer test followed by unstructured informal interviews to determine individual conceptions of engineering and what engineers do, as well as to make a comparison between teachers' conceptions from two states of the Yucatan peninsula. Drawings and open-ended responses were analyzed following an inductive data analysis approach. Four main categories emerged: engineers in action, characteristics of an engineer, gender, and work context. The majority of participants in this study perceive engineers as male individuals that perform activities related to construction (in the case of Quintana Roo) or oil (in the case of Campeche) industries. Interviews supported main findings while helping researchers gain insight into individual reasoning behind the interviewed teachers' drawings and answers. Our results suggest differences on how Yucatan peninsula teachers perceive engineering and engineers based on the state where they are from, their gender, and grade in which they teach.