Engineering Care: How Two Young Women of Color Establish Positional Identities in a Robotics Space

Abstract

This paper examines video data of a high school robotics team to explore practices that empower youth from underrepresented groups in engineering to disrupt traditional boundaries around what engineering is and who is considered competent to participate in its practice. We analyze in-the-moment positioning work with a focus on care and maintenance practices to understand how two young Women of Color author and negotiate positional identities as part of disciplinary practices. We argue that they co-author programming positional identities by crafting a local relational space, or a comfort space, through resonating acts of care for each other’s development. A more equitable future for engineering education requires an expansive vision of engineering that explicitly includes notions of what is cared for and the kinds of identities it offers to whom, and why.