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Engineering education research groups strive to transform the field of engineering through the integration of research and practice. Many of these research groups are interdisciplinary, including individuals from different fields (e.g., engineering, engineering education, education, sociology) and different roles within an institution. These individuals bring their own approaches to the generation, expression, and application of knowledge. While these epistemic differences can support the use of novel, interdisciplinary approaches, they can also lead to tensions that prevent groups from meeting their core goals. The goal of this project is to explore how engineering education research groups navigate these epistemic differences and engage in critical conversations to make research decisions. In Phase A of our study, we used Longino’s Critical Contextual Empiricism framework, which defines four norms of an idealized knowledge generating community to characterize the epistemic culture of the groups we studied. In this paper, we focus on how the norm of providing venues for critique and idea sharing supports critical conversations and inclusion among group members. We identified three affordances related to a group’s use of shared agendas, a type of venue that facilitate discussion of multiple project efforts, facilitate participation, and support group memory. Our work shows the importance of considering the details of the venue used to hold group meetings and how aspects of these spaces can support critical interactions among group members. 

Although the effects of COVID-19 were felt by all students, the pandemic exacerbated the barriers to belonging for women in engineering. Little work to date has investigated women’s experiences during the pandemic in disciplines that are hallmarked by masculinity. What scholarship has been completed on pandemic-necessitated virtual instruction has not examined how women’s experiences and sense of belonging differed by the college year in which this disruption in their learning environment occurred. Utilizing data from seven focus groups conducted in March 2022 with 22 students, this study investigates how pandemic-induced virtual instruction is related to sense of belonging for women within their engineering majors. We found not only that the disruption caused by the pandemic had differential outcomes for students, but that these differences were mainly related to the year in which pandemic-induced virtual instruction occurred. This study highlights the importance of focusing on belonging and related issues as women transition into their major. We offer implications and recommendations for practice and research based on the differential outcomes found.