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Engineering education research has long been rich in behavioral observations and inquiries. These investigations span a range of levels, from individual behaviors to group dynamics to organizational influences. Such behavioral research delves into the complex interplay of behaviors and actions, exploring their origins and impacts on educational environments and structures. Topics encompass learning, identity development, engagement, and professional practices, among others, that benefit from understanding behavioral choices and their underlying motivations. Ultimately, behavioral research in engineering education aids in comprehending and predicting how individuals operate, form habits, and transform themselves and their surroundings through their chosen actions. Regrettably, behavioral research in engineering education has traditionally relied on a limited set of frameworks, like EVT, SDT, and self-efficacy, thereby restricting the analytic depth of behavioral choice. These frameworks primarily focus on whether individuals feel they can perform a certain behavior or which behaviors are most salient in given situations while overlooking the justifications, or the why, that drive behavioral choices – a critical aspect of the complete picture. Justifications are important; behaviors are context-specific and dynamic, closely tied to an individual's interpretations of their surroundings, expectations, self-concept, and goals, among other factors. Therefore, understanding why behaviors are performed yields a more nuanced image that combines these influences with their eventual outcomes. In an effort to explore behavioral choices and investigate why they are, or are not, performed, this paper presents the Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) framework. This approach emphasizes the pivotal role of intention in individuals' behavioral choices. It proposes that personal beliefs, norms, and abilities are the key determinants of intentionality. Whether or not an individual performs a behavior is therefore contingent upon their beliefs about performing the behavior, specifically their behavioral, normative, and control beliefs. These beliefs reveal their feelings toward a behavior, their expectations of social acceptability, and their perceived capability to execute the behavior. As a result, the RAA transcends contextual constraints and can be applied to a wide spectrum of behaviors, environments, and systems, shedding light on how individuals perceive actions and decide whether to act upon them. We introduce the RAA to offer engineering education research a substantive theory for extracting and investigating the determinants behind individuals' preferential behaviors. Further, the RAA broadens existing behavioral analysis by emphasizing the factors behind behavioral choices, specifically focusing on the intricate interplay between beliefs and social norms in the decision-making process. In this context, the RAA represents a distinctive and novel approach to conceptualizing behavior, which will benefit fellow researchers. This paper begins with a review of pertinent engineering and higher education literature to situate the RAA within similar behavioral choice studies. It then explores the components of the RAA, delving into their significance and implications. The paper concludes with select research both within and beyond the engineering education domain to underscore the applicability, utility, and relevance of the RAA and provide examples for future inquiries. 

This project explores the collaborative skills occurring within engineering education and practice. While technical competence is crucial, collaborative skills are paramount in engineering enterprises, and current evidence suggests working in teams does not ensure the development of effective collaboration behaviors among engineers. Yet, lifelong learning requires engineers to navigate complex interactions within diverse design teams, emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding of collaboration. To address this gap, our study aims to identify the least-performed effective collaboration behaviors in engineering capstone teams and explore the reasons behind this occurrence. This investigation is part of a larger study that employs the Reasoned Action Approach1 where we seek to uncover individual beliefs and factors influencing the performance of target behaviors. These insights serve as tools for engineers, students, educators, and managers to assess and enhance collaboration skills, fostering effective teamwork in engineering settings. Ultimately, this overarching goal of advancing professional formation in engineering distills into the key question: Why do individuals exhibit variations in performing effective collaboration behaviors in engineering teams? 

As engineering students transition from their undergraduate education into their first full-time roles within industry, they are often facing a two year induction period as a result of a Theory-to-Practice gap (Gao & Rhinehart, 2004; Rhinehart, 2019, Rhinehart 2015). The gap between engineering students and industry practitioners can be the result of many different factors: students learning complex and fundamental concepts through simple problems, students having difficulty combining knowledge from different courses to solve realistic scenarios, or the lack of time students have to master these concepts (Rhinehart, 2015). This two year induction period causes problems for the company, the individuals, and for higher education, so it is important to identify areas where this gap exists and how it can potentially be mitigated. One area worthy of investigation related to the Theory to Practice gap is the field of process safety education due to its significant impact on professional practice. This pilot study sought to gain an initial understanding of what differences may exist between how experienced industry practitioners and undergraduate engineering students approach process safety judgments. We used this data as a means for determining if approaches to process safety judgments may be an area related to where this gap has been observed. As part of the pilot study, we conducted interviews with both students and practitioners where we provided them with a list of competing criteria that are relevant to process safety judgements such as time, production, and relationships, and then asked them to describe their approach to making process safety judgments given five specific scenarios. We found that industry practitioners and students were both relying on previous experience when describing their approaches to process safety judgments. Practitioners related the scenarios to prior work place events, while students connected them to problems they learned about in class, internships, or retail jobs. A noted difference between industry practitioners and students was that industry practitioners also described being heavily influenced by relationships with co-workers, superiors, and families when approaching these judgments, which seemed to be lacking in the student responses. Past process safety incidents, as documented by the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), have shown that the dynamics of relationships can have an impact on judgment processes which lead to detrimental results. The findings from this study provide additional support for the role of relationships in process safety judgments and the need for process safety instruction that addresses this role. Moving forward, it will be important to expose undergraduate students to the role of relationships in judgment-making processes so that we can better prepare them to navigate the complexities of process safety judgments. 

As engineering students transition from their undergraduate education into their first full-time roles within industry, they are often facing a two year induction period as a result of a Theory-to-Practice gap (Gao & Rhinehart, 2004; Rhinehart, 2019, Rhinehart 2015). The gap between engineering students and industry practitioners can be the result of many different factors: students learning complex and fundamental concepts through simple problems, students having difficulty combining knowledge from different courses to solve realistic scenarios, or the lack of time students have to master these concepts (Rhinehart, 2015). This two year induction period causes problems for the company, the individuals, and for higher education, so it is important to identify areas where this gap exists and how it can potentially be mitigated. One area worthy of investigation related to the Theory to Practice gap is the field of process safety education due to its significant impact on professional practice. This pilot study sought to gain an initial understanding of what differences may exist between how experienced industry practitioners and undergraduate engineering students approach process safety judgments. We used this data as a means for determining if approaches to process safety judgments may be an area related to where this gap has been observed. As part of the pilot study, we conducted interviews with both students and practitioners where we provided them with a list of competing criteria that are relevant to process safety judgements such as time, production, and relationships, and then asked them to describe their approach to making process safety judgments given five specific scenarios. We found that industry practitioners and students were both relying on previous experience when describing their approaches to process safety judgments. Practitioners related the scenarios to prior work place events, while students connected them to problems they learned about in class, internships, or retail jobs. A noted difference between industry practitioners and students was that industry practitioners also described being heavily influenced by relationships with co-workers, superiors, and families when approaching these judgments, which seemed to be lacking in the student responses. Past process safety incidents, as documented by the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), have shown that the dynamics of relationships can have an impact on judgment processes which lead to detrimental results. The findings from this study provide additional support for the role of relationships in process safety judgments and the need for process safety instruction that addresses this role. Moving forward, it will be important to expose undergraduate students to the role of relationships in judgment-making processes so that we can better prepare them to navigate the complexities of process safety judgments. 

As engineering students transition from their undergraduate education into their first full-time roles within industry, they are often facing a two year induction period as a result of a Theory-to-Practice gap (Gao & Rhinehart, 2004; Rhinehart, 2019, Rhinehart 2015). The gap between engineering students and industry practitioners can be the result of many different factors: students learning complex and fundamental concepts through simple problems, students having difficulty combining knowledge from different courses to solve realistic scenarios, or the lack of time students have to master these concepts (Rhinehart, 2015). This two year induction period causes problems for the company, the individuals, and for higher education, so it is important to identify areas where this gap exists and how it can potentially be mitigated. One area worthy of investigation related to the Theory to Practice gap is the field of process safety education due to its significant impact on professional practice. This pilot study sought to gain an initial understanding of what differences may exist between how experienced industry practitioners and undergraduate engineering students approach process safety judgments. We used this data as a means for determining if approaches to process safety judgments may be an area related to where this gap has been observed. As part of the pilot study, we conducted interviews with both students and practitioners where we provided them with a list of competing criteria that are relevant to process safety judgements such as time, production, and relationships, and then asked them to describe their approach to making process safety judgments given five specific scenarios. We found that industry practitioners and students were both relying on previous experience when describing their approaches to process safety judgments. Practitioners related the scenarios to prior work place events, while students connected them to problems they learned about in class, internships, or retail jobs. A noted difference between industry practitioners and students was that industry practitioners also described being heavily influenced by relationships with co-workers, superiors, and families when approaching these judgments, which seemed to be lacking in the student responses. Past process safety incidents, as documented by the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), have shown that the dynamics of relationships can have an impact on judgment processes which lead to detrimental results. The findings from this study provide additional support for the role of relationships in process safety judgments and the need for process safety instruction that addresses this role. Moving forward, it will be important to expose undergraduate students to the role of relationships in judgment-making processes so that we can better prepare them to navigate the complexities of process safety judgments. 

Contribution: This study examined the role of the engineering and smartness identities of three women as they made decisions about their participation in engineering majors. In addressing the under-representation of women in engineering, particularly in electrical engineering and computer science fields where they have been extremely under-represented, it is important to consider engineering identity as it has been shown to be an important component of major selection and persistence. Background: Smartness is inextricably linked to engineering and prior work has shown that identifying as smart is salient to students who choose engineering majors. However, the relative roles of students’ engineering and smartness identities as they relate to academic decision making and persistence in engineering is not well understood. Research Question: How do engineering identity and smartness identity relate to women’s decisions about choosing engineering majors in the instances of joining engineering, changing engineering major, and leaving engineering? Methodology: Data were collected from a series of three interviews with three different women. Data condensation techniques, including writing participant summary memos and analytic memos, focused on detailing participants’ academic decisions, engineering identity, and smartness identity were used for analysis. Data visualization was used to map the women’s engineering identity and smartness identity to their academic decisions related to their majors. Findings: The findings indicate the participants’ smartness identity was salient in the initial decision to matriculate into engineering, both their engineering and smartness identities remained stable as they persisted in or left engineering. And reveal complex interactions between these identities and decision making. 

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. 

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. 

Well-structured, de-contextualized problems that can be solved using solely technical approaches remain a large component of the engineering education curriculum. As a result, students may mistakenly believe that all engineering work can be done the same way—without the use of other approaches. Capstone design courses are an established way of exposing undergraduate students to ill-structured design tasks that more realistically reflect engineering practice. Yet, little is known about the influence of their capstone design experiences on their beliefs about how engineering design decisions are made. Our study compared students’ beliefs about four diverse approaches (technical, empathic, guess-based, and experience-based) to making engineering design decisions at the start of their capstone to their beliefs held at the end of their capstone. We conducted and analyzed qualitative transcripts from one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with 17 capstone students. We found little evidence that students’ experience in capstone courses changed their beliefs about diverse approaches to making engineering design decisions. The minimal change that we did find in students’ beliefs was primarily about guess-based approaches, and that change was not uniform amongst the students who did demonstrate change. Our findings point to the resiliency of students’ beliefs about approaches to design decisions throughout an engineering capstone design experience. Therefore, we recommend instructors foster reflexivity within their classrooms to disrupt these limited, normative beliefs about the approaches needed to make engineering design decisions.