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Abstract Background While researchers in graduate engineering education are beginning to study facets of student experiences as they relate to attrition and persistence, theoretical applications of thriving theory have not been applied to graduate education contexts. Literature addresses students who persist and those who depart, inherently making assumptions that students who persist are doing well.
Purpose/Hypothesis The purpose of this article was to understand graduate student well‐being within students that persist and depart from the engineering PhD through an adapted model of the Spreitzer et al.'s Socially Embedded Model for Thriving at Work.
Design/Method Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 64 current and former engineering PhD students, representing various stages of the PhD, status of persistence, questioning departure, or having left a PhD program. Interview transcripts were analyzed using an abductive analysis approach.
Results An expanded model for thriving in graduate school was developed. While this study contextualizes the core elements of thriving theory (context features, agentic behaviors, and produced resources), we propose that the mechanisms for thriving in graduate school lie in interactions across these themes in processes we call Adapting, Internalizing, and Cultivating. We also reveal the presence of hidden competencies (from the point of view of the graduate student participants) that facilitate these transitions.
Conclusion Thriving in graduate school is an interconnected process which has not been explored in the context of engineering. This study shows how even students who persist in their degree may only be surviving, rather than thriving.
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Engineering students entering graduate school are typically underprepared for the writing tasks involved completing a Ph.D. Previous work has shown that writing attitudes and confidence in writing skills correlate with likelihood of pursuing certain careers and persistence and attrition in the program. However, all work to date has considered graduate students all together: In this study we seek to understand potential differences in the ways that U.S. domestic students and international student (both those studying in the U.S. and those studying in other countries) so that researchers and faculty who teach engineering communication can better tailor their activities and approaches to teaching writing. A survey accessing the students writing approaches, concepts, and self-regulatory efficacy was distributed to engineering graduate students at universities in Japan and Norway. The results of this survey were then compared to the results of a similar survey taken by domestic engineering graduate students and international engineering graduate students studying in the U.S. Findings indicate that there are statistically significant differences between U.S. domestic engineering graduate students with international engineering graduate students for most of the engineering writing attitudinal factors studied, indicating that instructors should begin to tailor approaches differently for individual students. From a research perspective, we will continue to use these findings to investigate and illuminate cultural variations that can influence the writing process.more » « less
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The objective of this research paper is to present the development and validation of a short-form survey that can be used to easily assess primary attitudes that engineering students hold as they approach academic writing. Engineering writing is a competency that is often-cited as a crucial skill for engineers to develop but is often under-emphasized in undergraduate or graduate curriculum. The affective dimension of writing (feelings, emotions, writer’s block, and writing apprehension) can further complicate the process of writing for students who write infrequently. For graduate students, in particular, attitudes about writing have implications on career trajectory, persistence, and well-being in graduate school. The purpose of this research is to understand how graduate engineering student attitudes toward writing affect career trajectory, attrition, and persistence. Our prior research employs a series of previously-developed scales assessing various dimensions of writing attitudes and behaviors as a way to understand multiple dimensions of a student’s affective relationship with writing; however, the survey is long (~30 minutes) and can be time-consuming for researchers to analyze. Each of the scales within the survey studies an aspect of the writer’s attitudes. This research employs confirmatory factor analysis to develop a short form survey that gives accurate results, such that students can take a web-hosted writing attitudes survey and immediately be given their “writing attitude profile” with writing strategies tailored to their specific writing profile.more » « less
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At the graduate level, most milestones are based on the ability to write for an academic audience, whether that be for dissertation proposals, publications, or funding opportunities. Writing scholars often discuss the process by which graduate students learn to join their academic “discourse communities” through academic literacies theory. Graduate attrition researchers relate the feeling of belonging with persistence in doctoral programs; however, there has not to date been any research that directly studies engineering writing attitudes and perceptions with student career trajectories, persistence, or attrition. To meet this need, this paper presents research from a larger study analyzing graduate level engineering writing and attrition. The explicit objective of this paper is to present quantitative data relating current graduate engineering students' attitudes, processes, and concepts of academic writing with the certainty of their career trajectory. Five scales measuring aspects of writing were deployed to engineering programs at ten research intensive universities across the United States, with a final total of n=621 graduate student respondents that represent early-career, mid-career, and late-career stages of the graduate timeline. Results indicate that graduate student processes and conceptions of engineering writing correlate with the likelihood of pursuing careers in various engineering sectors after completing their graduate degree programs.more » « less
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Though many writing researchers link the role of writing with disciplinary socialization, there is little research outside of anecdotal evidence on how engineering graduate students in particular conceptualize and relate to the writing process. These affective components of writing are as necessary as the cognitive activities in terms of developing successful graduate engineering writers. To meet this gap, the present study shows survey data from N=210 graduate engineering students at research intensive universities across the United States. The survey comprised three validated writing scales investigating students' conceptions of writing, processes of writing, writing self-efficacy in a single survey deployment. Descriptive statistics show the common processes and conceptions with writing, but Pearson correlations calculated across scales reveal statistically significant relationships among the scale factors, for example that many graduate engineering writers often struggle with a “trifecta” of low writing self-efficacy, perfectionism, and procrastination. This study extends prior mixed methods and smaller scale quantitative work that has been done in the past with engineering graduate students, and also points to the importance of addressing the layered nature of student issues with writing. Findings are situated in terms of practical recommendations for technical writing researchers and faculty as they help graduate students navigate academic engineering writing.more » « less
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