Promoting Belonging and Breaking Down Gatekeeping in Youth-Centered Engineering Spaces.

In recent years there has been a movement to increase accessibility to technology-rich environments like makerspaces for traditionally underserved youth in engineering. Several pro-Makerspace actors purport that having experiences in such open-ended project-based settings can encourage engagement with engineering. However, as we know from prior work in the area, simply providing access to technology-rich spaces does not allow underserved youth to feel ownership and belonging in both makerspaces and engineering environments. Additionally, formal and informal engineering education experiences do not center on preventing harm to communities and the environment in engineering work. Not only do future generations of engineers need to reduce the harm caused by engineering and technology proactively, but harm reduction also offers authentic real-world applications to engineering problems that may create a more human-centered approach to addressing problems within communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]