Engineering Science Capital: co-creating resources to showcase diversity of engineering careers to 3-7 year olds and families

工程对英国经济非常重要，贡献了GDP的26%。然而，在工程部门存在严重的技能短缺和显著的性别失衡。在英国，只有大约12%的工程师是女性，这是欧洲最低的比例。缺乏多样性会对公司业绩和创新产生负面影响，也会带来巨大的经济成本。最近的一份报告显示，充分利用女性的经济潜力，到2025年，全球年度GDP将增加12万亿美元（数据来自https://www.wes.org.uk/content/wesstatistics）。与性别和工程师/工程相关的刻板印象阻碍了年轻人，尤其是女孩，考虑和追求工程职业。工程界一直在努力与公众接触，激励公众，试图吸引年轻人从事工程，但最近更新的珀金报告指出，对职业吸收的总体影响很小。许多举措都是针对年龄较大的孩子的，尽管有大量证据支持尽早开始职业教育。研究发现，孩子们在4岁时就开始形成职业抱负，在相似的年龄受到性别刻板印象的强烈影响。你认识谁也是一个关键因素；科学资本是衡量你与科学的关系（即你对科学的了解，你认识谁从事科学工作等）。科学资本低的儿童对科学事业的看法更可能狭隘，参加可以增加知识的活动的机会也更少，例如工作经验，科学节等。英国皇家工程院（Royal Academy of Engineering）一份关于工程学认知的报告证实，年轻人往往没有意识到工程学领域机会的多样性，没有意识到创造力、团队合作和解决问题能力等因素的重要性，也没有意识到工程学与日常生活的相关性。很明显，必须做更多的工作来挑战陈规定型观念，发展技能/工程知识，以确保性别和科学资本之间的机会平等，从而增加未来工程劳动力的多样性，解决关键的技能短缺问题。鉴于已证实和成功的干预措施范围广泛，以及后期正在开展的活动，本项目将侧重于早期干预措施、试验简单方法和建立证据基础。具体来说，在这个项目中，我们的目标是与3-7岁的儿童及其主要影响者（教师和家长/家庭）建立科学/工程资本的各个方面，目标是贫困地区的受众，并调查成功干预的过程和关键组成部分。理解过程，即为什么一项活动有效，将是本提案的关键焦点，为目标受众提供证据，以支持进一步的工程和STEM干预措施的设计和交付。该项目包括共同创造资源，展示工程职业的范围和多样性。工程师将与电影制作人、插画家、故事书作者、音乐家、教师、公众参与专家和儿童合作，创造一系列资源，包括在各种环境中使用的动手实验活动。编写的材料将在不同的学校和托儿所试用，由儿童及其家庭参与，随后将纳入从最初交付中学习的内容，推广到更广泛的受众。该项目的总体目标是最终吸引更多不同类型的年轻人考虑从事工程职业。

Engineering is hugely important to the UK economy, contributing 26% of GDP. However, within the engineering sector there is a severe skills shortage and a significant gender imbalance. In the UK only around 12% of engineers are women, which is the lowest proportion in Europe. Lack of diversity has a negative impact on company performance and innovation as well as a huge economic cost, with a recent report suggesting that harnessing the full economic potential of women would add twelve trillion dollars to global annual GDP in 2025 (data from https://www.wes.org.uk/content/wesstatistics). Stereotypes, both related to gender and engineers/engineering as a career, serve to dissuade young people, and especially girls, from considering, and pursuing, engineering careers. There has been a lot of effort by the engineering community to engage with, and inspire, the public, in an attempt to attract young people to engineering, but the recent updated Perkin report noted little overall impact on career uptake. Many initiatives are aimed at older children, though there is significant evidence to support starting careers education early. Research has found that children begin forming career aspirations as young as 4 and at a similar age are strongly influenced by gender stereotypes. Who you know is also a critical factor; science capital is a measure of your relationship with science (i.e. what you know about it, who you know who works in science etc) and children with low science capital are more likely to have narrow views of science careers and less opportunities to participate in activities which could enhance their knowledge, e.g. work experience, science festivals etc. A Royal Academy of Engineering report on perceptions of engineering confirmed that young people are often not aware of the diversity of opportunities within engineering, the importance of factors like creativity, team work and problem solving, and the relevance of engineering to everyday life.It is clear that is essential that more needs to be done to challenge stereotypes and develop skills/engineering knowledge to ensure equality of opportunity across gender and science capital to increase diversity in the future Engineering workforce and address the critical skills shortage. Given the range of proven and successful interventions and ongoing activity at later years this project will concentrate on early years interventions, trialling simple approaches and building an evidence base. Specifically, within this project we aim to build aspects of science/engineering capital with 3-7 year olds and their key influencers (teachers and parents/families), targeting audiences in areas of deprivation, and investigating the process and key components of successful interventions. Understanding the process, i.e. why an activity works, will be a key focus of this proposal generating evidence to support the design and delivery of further Engineering, and STEM, interventions for this target audience. The project comprises co-creation of resources, showcasing the range and diversity of engineering careers. Engineers will work together with film makers, illustrators, storybook writers, musicians, teachers, public engagement specialists and children to create sets of resources, including hands-on experimental activities, for use in a variety of settings. The developed materials will be piloted in different schools and nurseries, with children and their families, and subsequently, incorporating learning from initial delivery, rolled out to reach a wider audience.The overall aim of the project is to ultimately attract a more diverse range of young people to consider engineering careers.