Paper ID #34465 WIP Knowing Engineering Through the Arts: The Impact of the Film Hid- den Figures on Perceptions of Engineering Using Arts-Based Research Methods Katherine Robert, University of Denver Katherine is a doctoral candidate at the University of Denver’s Morgridge School of Education in the higher education department. In her dissertation research, she uses arts-based research methods, new materialist theory, and is guided by culturally responsive methodological principles to collaborate with underrepresented engineering students to uncover their experiences of socialization into the professional engineering culture. Katherine is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist with an expansive career and aca- demic history that she intends to utilize to help STEM organizations become more inclusive and equitable. c American Society for Engineering Education, 2021 Knowing engineering through the arts: The impact of the film Hidden Figures on perceptions of engineering using arts-based research methods Katherine A. Robert University of Denver Morgridge College of Education, Doctoral Candidate in Higher Education Abstract Despite decades of efforts, racial and gender diversity remains elusive for engineering education and the professions. Researchers in engineering education call for innovative research methodologies to increase diversity in engineering education. My unique new materialist and arts-based research project explores the intersections of race, gender, history, STEM education, and the arts, and is guided by the principles of culturally responsive methodologies. I use this work-in-progress to better understand how the film Hidden Figures affected the public’s understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and the professions. My purpose is to uncover and share additional hidden stories about Black women’s experiences in engineering education and the professions today, but also to demonstrate a different methodological framework that centers Black women’s voices and shifts how the lack of racial and gender diversity in engineering is perceived. I found that the film had a tremendous impact on women and girls of color by providing visible role models in STEM professions. Keywords Engineering education, diversity, Hidden Figures, arts-based research methods, new materialism, culturally responsive methodologies Introduction Despite decades of efforts, racial and gender diversity remains elusive for engineering education and the professions [1]. Researchers in engineering education call for innovative methodologies [2], [3] to examine the complicated historical and cultural entanglements related to increasing diversity in engineering education, which includes research method alternatives to the use of positivist frameworks that dominate engineering culture [4]. I answer this call with my unique critical qualitative and arts-based research project that explores the intersections of race, gender, history, culture, education, and the arts, which is guided by the principles of culturally responsive methodologies [5]. The idea for my study arose during my higher education doctoral dissertation proposal research on diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) in engineering education. I use this work-in-progress to better understand how the film Hidden Figures affected the public’s understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and the professions, including my own perspectives as a White woman. My purpose is to uncover and share additional hidden stories about women, and particularly Black women’s experiences in engineering education and the professions today, but also to demonstrate a different methodological framework that centers Black women’s voices and shifts how the lack of racial and gender diversity in engineering is perceived. The film Hidden Figures [6] tells the stories of three African American female mathematicians who worked at Langley in the space programs at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1960s. These women’s stories were unknown and untold until author Margot Lee Shetterly discovered that her Sunday school teacher was Katherine Johnson [7]. Johnson, along with Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson, are the focus of the film, which is based on Shetterly’s book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race” [8]. While the book detailed the oppressive, racist culture of the civil rights context that all the Black women faced at Langley at the time, the film is geared toward entertainment for the broader public and shifts the racial stories [7]. I use three guiding research questions to map the borders of my inquiry: • How do the arts influence participation in STEM higher education? • Specifically, how did Hidden Figures, the 2016 film about African American women’s experiences as engineers and mathematicians at the 1960s NASA space program, affect efforts to increase participation of girls and students from racially underrepresented communities in engineering? • How do engineering educators and the U.S public perceive and interpret new information about the history of discrimination in STEM fields? My findings indicate that the film had a tremendous impact on Black women in STEM, but also White women and other women of color by providing much needed visual models of success in STEM professions. I begin my paper with a review of some of the research literature to set up the context of my study, after which I explain my unique methodological framework and research design. In the last section, I discuss my analysis process and findings in more detail. I end with the limitations and the future iterations of this project. Literature Review The purpose of my literature review is to contextualize my inquiry about the impacts that the film Hidden Figures had on Black women and girls in STEM education and professions, but also how the broader American public perceives Black women’s contributions to STEM fields and education. I take an interdisciplinary approach to examining the research that aligns with my theoretical framework. I briefly show the history of racism and sexism in U.S. education and STEM while also reviewing research about the current cultural climate in STEM in relation to gender and racial identities. Next, I review the critical media research about portrayals of Black women and girls in relationship to STEM. I weave in film reviews and discussions about Hidden Figures when pertinent. I end with a short discussion about the use of different epistemological approaches to STEM research in the Black community to justify my use of arts-based research methods as culturally responsive. Historical Entanglements of Race and Gender in STEM Today The film chronicles the ways in which the patriotic contributions by the Black women working at Langley in the space program during the Cold War space race were excluded from history. The film includes the complicated ways that the characters’ race and gender identities intersected with the politics of the era. Today, women from all racial backgrounds have levels of participation in STEM education and professions that remains below their overall population in the U.S. [9]. And for women who enter STEM, contemporary education researchers documented the ways in which they continue to face discrimination in engineering education culture [10], [11], including the historical links that influence perceptions about technology, gender, and STEM participation today [12], [13]. Historically, gender concepts related to technology complicated stories about who is an engineer and scientist and what is considered legitimate technology and engineering practices [13]. The World’s Fairs in the early U.S. modern industrial era in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marginalized women as participants and inventors [14] and contributed to a gendering of engineering and technology as masculine spaces and activities [15]. Indeed, the emerging technology and science of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century were used to describe women’s physiology as deficient and inferior to men [16]. In the film, women who calculated mathematics were called computers, which both Black and White women performed as the task was deemed unskilled tedious labor that was beneath men [12], [13], [17]. Recent research [18], [19] documents the gendered culture of engineering education that remains chilly to women [20] and people of color [21], [22] today. In the film, the women confront barriers to career advancement based on their gender and race, despite their competency and skills. Contemporary empirical research also documents the way that gender is used today, often unwittingly, to designate some engineering fields, tasks, and roles as more masculine or feminine within a hierarchy [18]. Intersecting social identities [23] like age, gender, and race as well as academic and professional disciplines and degree attainment generate a hierarchy of power in STEM that is difficult to study due to the complex relationality between these various social identities [24]. This difficulty is increased when examined in relationship to the culture of engineering, which is apolitical, ahistorical, and locked in a positivist mindset that research finds often denies the space to acknowledge how different bodies experience engineering culture [11], [25]. However, higher education in general rests on limited understandings about the complex intersections