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Engineering as a field is dominated by toxic masculinity, heteronormativity, whiteness, and cisnormativity, as well as the promotion of objectiveness and depoliticization of identity. There is a dearth of knowledge surrounding transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) student experiences in engineering, and much of the [limited] available research on TGNC STEM student lives assumes a universalized trans experience, not taking into account intersecting marginal identities that can affect a student’s performance and sense of belonging in engineering or STEM environments. STEM-related research into marginalized populations’ experiences is often done without the use of feminist, queer, trans, and anti-racist research methodologies that take into consideration power imbalances between the researcher and participant and the implications of conducting research on and with subordinated population groups. This study addresses these research gaps. We used critical collaborative ethnographic site visits to center TGNC positionality and community-centered research ethics. Critical ethnographic methods put critical theories into action by rooting the participant’s experiences and study observations in larger global justice frameworks at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, culture, and disability. This framing places the researcher with the subjects to co-create results from the fieldwork, allowing students to retain power in the relationship with the researcher and exert some control over their portrayal in the research products. Further, marginalized population group research is best conducted by members of that population group so as to upset inherent power imbalances between the researcher and the participant. So, as a critical part of our methodology, our research team consists of transgender, gender nonconforming, and cisgender interdisciplinary researchers in engineering and women, gender, and sexuality studies (WGSS), with a transgender and queer WGSS researcher as the only point of contact with the TGNC research participants. This paper details the results from a 4-day critical collaborative ethnographic site visit involving two mechanical engineering students at a prestigious private university in the Northeastern United States. The activities of the visit included formal semi-structured interviews as well as less formal interactions with each participant, such as attending classes, visiting important campus and community spaces, or hanging out with the participant’s friend/peer groups. The visiting researcher also explored the college campus and the broader community on his own, noting the location's unique specificity. As predicted by previous literature and theoretical grounding and significant findings from previous phases of this research, the results pointed to the uniqueness of each student’s identity, location, political worldview, and support system. The two TGNC student participants, both with multiple intersecting marginal identities, had incredibly different experiences in the same mechanical engineering program, leading to one participant experiencing resounding success and the other leaving STEM altogether. The findings from this critical collaborative ethnographic site visit suggest that barriers to success or finding belonging for TGNC students in engineering must be considered through the use of intersectionality theory.
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Suggestions for Responsible Qualitative Research with Transgender Engineering Students Using an Auto-Ethnographic Approach
"Abstract—The need for increasing diversity in engineering has paved the road for a rich wealth of literature exploring the experiences of marginalized students in these spaces. Much of this literature utilizes qualitative methodology to understand the experiences of these students, as told through their own words. However, work of this nature can often be influenced by the implicit biases that the researcher carries, as well as the inherent misalignment of power present between researcher and participant. These misalignments may be exacerbated when the researcher is interviewing a marginalized participant, while not identifying as part of a marginalized identity themselves. Students within the LGBTQ+ community may reside at multiple marginalized identities, and as such, the issues surrounding interviewing marginalized identities can be compounded further. Even the most well-intentioned and experienced researcher may find themselves in an interview with a marginalized individual in which implicit biases and unspoken power structures alter the trajectory of the interview. This paper seeks to provide an auto- ethnographic reflection by the first author on the interview of a transgender research participant, while simultaneously providing an opportunity to identify ways in which her interview could have been methodologically improved. This will be accomplished by the first author’s analysis of the interview and meta-data. This analysis is valuable, as the first author identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ engineering community herself."
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- Award ID(s):
- 1636475
- PAR ID:
- 10206029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Education
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE43999.2019.9028639
