Gatekeepers to broadening participation in engineering investigating variation across high schools comparing who could go versus who does go into engineering

This paper introduces the Gatekeepers Study, a three-year project with the goal of examining variation in enrollment in postsecondary engineering programs for students from Virginia high schools. Our research takes a macroscopic, systemic view of an entire state's high school-to-postsecondary engineering pathway to understand how each high school performs in terms of having its students from underrepresented groups who fit an engineering academic profile actually choose to enroll in an engineering postsecondary program. We frame our research holistically to understand how the variety of potential gatekeepers — including the people, places, programs, and policies — might be positioned, tweaked, or trained to support a more diverse population of students who choose to enroll in postsecondary engineering programs. This mixed-methods research design is organized into three sequential phases and will be grounded theoretically using Social Cognitive Career Theory to guide variable identification and qualitative protocol development. We are currently in Phase 1 and will describe preliminary results.