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Engineering educators in many contexts are increasingly being called to contribute to equity. The focus of our CAREER project is to investigate the ways in which engineering faculty, staff and administrators think about the cause of gender- and race-based minoritization in engineering. Specifically, we investigate the beliefs they express about why women and people of color remain minoritized in engineering and how they arrive at those beliefs. Long term goals of the work include designing evidence-based professional development that can support faculty at any stage in their development as change agents for equity in engineering. The overarching project design includes a series of four one-on-one interviews with participants. The first two interviews are focused on their beliefs about gender- and race-based minoritization, respectively. The third interview will explore their narrative, and the fourth interview (or some type of interaction) will be designed based on how the project evolves and what we learn. We are currently in the second year of the project. To start, our research team used crowdsourcing as a method of recruiting our participants. We asked students to identify engineering educators that they considered to be inclusive based on their lived experience. We oversampled for students from minoritized groups (non-male, non-white). We also allowed those nominated by students to refer to any peers that they felt were inclusive. This resulted in the following participant pool with at least one majority identity (race or gender): 11 white men, 11 white women, and 5 men of color. After piloting our initial interview protocol, we completed gender beliefs interviews with all 27 participants during the 2020-2021 academic year. We had the interviews transcribed, and members of our research checked them for accuracy and de-identified them. The clean transcripts were then sent back to the participants for review. We began data condensation by generating a summary sheet for each participant, which includes the main concepts captured in each section of their gender beliefs interview. We are currently (2021-2022) conducting race beliefs interviews with those same participants. We published the results of piloting the use of our methodological framework, Thinking as Argument (TaA) in the 2021 ASEE proceedings. In short, we believe the framework shows promise for studying beliefs at a deeper level by inviting participants to work through the types of evidence they draw on to commit to their beliefs about the cause of minoritization in engineering. In this paper, we offer some insights that are emerging at this early stage of the project: Different participants draw on diverse ways of knowing to commit to their beliefs, including lived experience and scholarship. These ways of knowing seem potentially related to their own identities. For example, several participants who identify as men of color leverage their own experiences with racism to explain the cause of sexism. This insight has given us pause on the ways in which our framework, TaA, privileges academic or argumentative ways of knowing. We are gaining awareness of the incredible complexity that exists within trying to characterize or evaluate someone's contributions to equity as they relate to their ways of thinking. This finding has given us a pause about the ways in which we, as researchers, assign value to ways of being or acting. At this current stage, we are exploring further by engaging ourselves in reflection of other ways in which beliefs in this context are formed and we are inviting others to do the same. Future work will include ongoing analysis and sensemaking. With the race beliefs completed, we will be able to use data display techniques to explore any patterns between the participants’ beliefs and positionalities. We look forward to honing our protocol for the narrative interviews and are soliciting feedback in terms of how to use the fourth and final interaction of the project in a more participatory way to encourage and give back to our participants.
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Thinking as Argument: A Theoretical Framework for Studying how Faculty Arrive at Their Deeply-held Beliefs About Inequity in Engineering
When it comes to engaging with complex, social problems, it is important to be aware of not only what one believes, but also why one believes it. Plus, focusing on beliefs about the cause of a social phenomenon (e.g., what one believes causes inequitable participation of women in engineering) rather than just beliefs about the phenomena itself (e.g., what one believes about the extent to which gender inequity exists in engineering) is an important contribution to broadening participation because one’s causal beliefs relate to their ideas about what needs to happen to make engineering more equitable. In this paper, we describe our use of Thinking as Argument (TaA) as a promising theoretical framework for exploring how engineering educators arrive at their beliefs about the cause of gender-based inequity in engineering. According to TaA, the type of robust argument that is desirable for one to commit to their beliefs about the cause of complex social phenomena includes five distinct components: causal theory, evidence, counterargument, counterevidence, and rebuttal. By conducting interviews about gender-based inequity using TaA, we can explore 1) the ways in which individuals articulate their causal beliefs as arguments of varying sophistication, and 2) the ways in which individuals use evidence to commit to their beliefs. In this contribution, we: describe TaA as a framework, document how we used TaA in a pilot study to inform our ongoing research on engineering faculty’s causal beliefs, and provide initial evidence for TaA theory as a novel methodological contribution for studying beliefs related to equity in engineering. Specifically, our use of TaA revealed that while each participant offered a belief in a system-level cause of gender-based minoritization, there was considerable variation in the ways in which they used evidence to arrive at their beliefs and in their epistemological orientation toward gender-based inequities in engineering. We believe there is value in the use of TaA to study beliefs because ultimately, when we increase our explicit awareness of our commitment to our causal beliefs, we are better able to behave in ways that align with our beliefs and to develop agency to disrupt oppression.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1943934
- PAR ID:
- 10328127
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Common discourse conveys that to be an engineer, one must be “smart.” Our individual and collective beliefs about what constitutes smart behavior are shaped by our participation in the complex cultural practice of smartness. From the literature, we know that the criteria for being considered “smart” in our educational systems are biased. The emphasis on selecting and retaining only those who are deemed “smart enough” to be engineers perpetuates inequity in undergraduate engineering education. Less is known about what undergraduate students explicitly believe are the different ways of being smart in engineering or how those different ways of being a smart engineer are valued in introductory engineering classrooms. In this study, we explored the common beliefs of undergraduate engineering students regarding what it means to be smart in engineering. We also explored how the students personally valued those ways of being smart versus what they perceived as being valued in introductory engineering classrooms. Through our multi-phase, multi-method approach, we initially qualitatively characterized their beliefs into 11 different ways to be smart in engineering, based on a sample of 36 engineering students enrolled in first-year engineering courses. We then employed quantitative methods to uncover significant differences, with a 95% confidence interval, in six of the 11 ways of being smart between the values personally held by engineering students and what they perceived to be valued in their classrooms. Additionally, we qualitatively found that 1) students described grades as central to their classroom experience, 2) students described the classroom as a context where effortless achievement is associated with being smart, and 3) students described a lack of reward in the classroom for showing initiative and for considerations of social impact or helping others. As engineering educators strive to be more inclusive, it is essential to have a clear understanding and reflect on how students value different ways of being smart in engineering as well as consider how these values are embedded into teaching praxis.more » « less
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Abstract The use of two‐dimensional images to teach students about three‐dimensional molecules continues to be a prevalent issue in many classrooms. As affordable visualization technologies continue to advance, there has been an increasing interest to utilize novel technology, such as augmented reality (AR), in the development of molecular visualization tools. Existing evaluations of these visual–spatial learning tools focus primarily on student performance and attitude, with little attention toward potential inequity in student participation. Our study adds to the current literature on introducing molecular visualization technology in biochemistry classrooms by examining the potential inequity in a group activity mediated by AR technology. Adapting the participatory equity framework to our specific context, we view equity and inequity in terms of access to the technological conversational floor, a social space created when people enter technology‐mediated joint endeavors. We explore three questions: What are the different ways students interact with an AR model of the potassium channel? What are salient patterns of participation that may signify inequity in classroom technology use? What is the interplay between group social dynamics and the introduction of AR technology in the context of a technology‐mediated group activity? Pairing qualitative analysis with quantitative metrics, our mixed‐methods approach produced a complex story of student participation in an AR‐mediated group activity. The patterns of student participation showed that equity and inequity in an AR‐mediated biochemistry group learning activity are fluid and multifaceted. It was observed that students who gave more explanations during group discussion also had more interactions with the AR model (i.e., they had greater access to the technological conversational floor), and their opinion of the AR model may have greater influence on how their group engage with the AR model. This study provides more nuanced ways of conceptualizing equity and inequity in biochemistry learning settings.more » « less
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The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields has been a subject of extensive research and policy debate. However, there is limited clarity regarding the specific mechanisms that generate these disparities, and which interventions are most effective in reducing the gap. In this study, we use causal decomposition analysis to estimate how the gender gap in STEM participation would change if we were to intervene on women’s self-efficacy beliefs in mathematics. Women tend to underestimate their abilities in math-related fields, which can affect their educational and career choices. The question we ask is to what extent the gender gap in individuals’ enrollment in STEM majors and identification with mathematics would be reduced if self-efficacy in mathematics were set to be equal across gender categories. The results suggest that equalizing this target factor will reduce the observed disparities in math identity by 53%, and in the enrollment of STEM majors by 2.5%. The modest influence of self-efficacy on enrollment disparities suggests that it is not the predominant factor. We discuss the implications of our empirical findings, as well as how causal decomposition analysis can benefit social and behavioral disparities research.more » « less
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Abstract BackgroundStudents' identification with engineering is intertwined culturally with being smart. Broadly, engineering students are often considered to be smart by others and by themselves, and these beliefs about smartness—what it is and who has enough of it to be an engineer—are a fundamental and limiting aspect of students' experiences. PurposeThe purpose of this study was to explore how undergraduate engineering students describe themselves as smart enough to be engineers. We aimed to develop rich descriptions of the complex ways they articulate their identities as smart before coming to college and during the first two years of their undergraduate degrees. Design/MethodWe collected data through a series of interviews with 25 participants. We iteratively and collaboratively analyzed the data to determine the predominant ways the participants articulated their identities as smart enough to be engineers. We generated a qualitative data display to check for patterns related to pathways into engineering programs and privileged social identities. ResultsWe found that engineering students have three different ways to articulate that they are smart enough to be engineers: (1) they have innate abilities, (2) they are hardworking and dedicated to learning, and (3) they have skills and experience related to engineering. Additionally, we provide qualitative evidence that the innate abilities articulation relates to privilege. Discussion/ConclusionThe study participants engaged in identity work that produced the three articulations. As engineering educators, we need to take responsibility for the ways in which our participation in the cultural practice of smartness reproduces inequity.more » « less
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