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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. 

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. 

What does it mean to be “smart” in an engineering classroom? How do engineering students make sense of themselves a s smart enough to be engineers? The development of shared beliefs about what it means to be “smart” and where you rank compared to others is a result of smartness as a cultural practice. With the cultural practice framing, smartness i s not a noun – something that someone possesses a certain amount of, but rather it is a verb – something that is actively happening to and with others in context. The interactions between individuals result in shared beliefs about what it means to be smart. Specifically, when we participate in smartness as a cultural practice, we learn what is recognized as smart and our place in the relative hierarchy of smartness. 

Background: Those who participate in engineering are often assumed to be smart by others. At the same time, the cultural construction of what counts as “smart” is biased and therefore functions as a barrier to broadening participation in engineering. While considerable work has been done to understand engineering identity, how students understand themselves as smart is rarely made explicit in engineering identity research. Purpose: This paper is a theoretical discussion which highlights the need for engineering identity research to integrate students’ understanding of themselves as smart. By not incorporating students’ understanding of themselves as smart explicitly in work on engineering identity, we allow the bias in what gets recognized as smart to remain implicit and oppressive. Scope: In this paper, we argue that the idea of smart is very salient in engineering contexts and contributes to inequity. Then, we demonstrate how three different framings of identity allow for the explicit integration of how students are understanding themselves as smart. We also present selected examples from our empirical data to illustrate the concrete ways in which students’ understandings of themselves as smart manifest in an engineering context. Conclusions: We provided explicit opportunities for researchers to integrate students’ understandings of themselves as smart across three different framings of identity and how such understanding has shown up in our empirical research. In doing so, we conclude that making “smart” explicit in engineering identity provides a way to understand the exclusionary nature of engineering, and a new lens to apply when considering efforts to broaden participation in engineering. 

A well-developed interview protocol is an essential data collection tool in qualitative research. An established process to refine interview protocols can help build quality and consistency into data collection. However, despite the importance placed on interview protocols by academic texts, there is little guidance regarding how to systematically develop and refine interview protocols, particularly when exploring complex constructs, such as beliefs and identity. In this special session, attendees will learn and practice an approach for refining interview protocols for investigating complex constructs in engineering education. We share this interview refinement approach as it enabled us to determine if our interview questions prompted participants to provide data essential to answering our research questions for a pilot study investigating students' beliefs and identities. This special session will also include conversations around best practices related to data collection to access complex constructs and how these practices can impact and shape future research. We welcome attendees of all experience levels (novice to expert) with regard to designing interview protocols. The session will be facilitated by Dr. Emily Dringenberg, Dr. Rachel Kajfez, and their graduate students. Dr. Dringenberg is a qualitative researcher well versed in beliefs. Dr. Kajfez is a mixed methods researcher well versed in identity. Both have multiple NSF grants exploring these complex constructs. 

Despite decades of research, the underrepresentation of non-male, and non-white individuals in engineering continues to be a critical problem. A widespread and commonly accepted approach to recruit and retain diverse individuals is to provide multiple pathways into engineering degree programs, such as offering introductory courses at community colleges or regional campuses. Although these pathways are intended to promote diversity, they are similar in structure to the educational tracking practices common within the K-12 context that extant research has shown often work to perpetuate social inequalities. Students in less prestigious tracks have lower educational aspirations and less favorable self-beliefs. As such, the objective of this research is to understand undergraduate engineering students’ beliefs and identities with respect to smartness and engineering from different institutionalized educational pathways. In our executive summary and poster, we report on the pilot phase of the project consisting of nine semi-structured one-on-one interviews with first-year engineering students across three different institutionalized educational pathways as well as the development and refinement of the interview protocol. The pilot interview protocol was initially development to access the main constructs of interest for this research, beliefs about engineering and smartness as well as identity with respect to engineering and smartness. After the pilot interviews were completed, we utilized an interview protocol refinement approach and determined that the most insufficient portion of our initial protocol was the portion designed to have participants relate their engineering identity to their identity as smart (or not). As such, follow up questions were added to the protocol to provide clarity. The refined interview protocol will be used during the next phase of the study. The full study will include interviews with 30 participants across six different pathways to understand how participation in different institutionalized pathways relates to students’ experiences, beliefs, and identities. These participants will be interviewed up to three times to follow their development as they transition beyond introductory engineering courses regardless of if they continue with the engineering or not. Our work will provide valuable insights into the complex beliefs and identities about engineering and smartness of students participating in different institutionalized pathways into engineering. Ultimately, we believe our findings will inform the ways in which this common structural approach to broadening participation is enacted in engineering.