Search for: All records

Abstract BackgroundEngineering requires new solutions to improve undergraduate performance outcomes, including course grades and continued enrollment in engineering pathways. Belonging and engineering role identity have long been associated with successful outcomes in engineering, including academic success, retention, and well‐being. PurposeWe measure the relationships between belonging and role identity at the beginning of a first‐year engineering course with course grade and continued enrollment in engineering courses. We test the effect of an ecological belonging intervention on student belonging, course grade, and persistence. MethodStudents (n = 834) reported their sense of belonging in engineering, cross‐racial experiences, engineering performance/competence, interest in engineering, and engineering recognition before and after an in‐class intervention to improve classroom belonging ecology. Through a series of longitudinal multigroup path analyses, a form of structural equation modeling, we tested the predictive relationships of the measured constructs with engineering identity and investigated differences in these relationships by student gender and race/ethnicity. FindingsThe proposed model predicts course grades and continued enrollment, providing insight into the potential for interventions to support first‐year engineering students. Group analysis results demonstrate the difference in the function of these psychosocial measures for women and Black, Latino/a/x, and Indigenous (BLI) students, providing insights into the potential importance of sociocultural interventions within engineering classrooms to improve the engineering climate, engagement, and retention of students. ImplicationsThe results highlight the need for more specific, nuanced theoretical investigations of how marginalized students experience the engineering environment and develop social belonging and engineering role identity. 

Abstract BackgroundThe demand for engineers in the workforce continues to rise, which requires increased retention and degree completion at the undergraduate level. Engineering educators need to better understand opportunities to retain students in engineering majors. A strong sense of belonging in engineering represents one important contributor to persistence. However, research has not investigated how academic help-seeking behaviors relate to belonging and downstream outcomes, such as persistence in engineering. Interventions to support and develop belonging show promise in increasing student retention, with particularly positive influences on women, Black, Latino/a/x, and indigenous students. As part of a larger research project, a quasi-experimental intervention to develop a classroom ecology of belonging was conducted at a large Midwestern university in a required first-year, second-semester engineering programming course. The 45-min intervention presented students with stories from past students and peers to normalize academic challenges within the ecology of the classroom as typical and surmountable with perseverance, time, and effort. ResultsWith treatment (n = 737) and control (n = 689) participant responses, we investigated how the intervention condition affected students' comfort with seeking academic help and feeling safe being wrong in class as influences on belonging. Using path analysis, a form of structural equation modeling, we measured the influence of these attitudinal variables on belonging and the influence of belonging beyond a student’s grade point average on enrollment as an engineering major the following fall. The path analysis supports the importance of academic help-seeking and feeling safe to be wrong for belonging, as well as the importance of belonging on continued enrollment. A group path analysis compared the treatment and control groups and demonstrated the positive impact of the intervention on enrollment for the treatment participants. ConclusionsThe analyses demonstrate the importance of academic help-seeking in students’ sense of belonging in the classroom with implications for identifying effective tools to improve students’ sense of belonging through supporting help-seeking behaviors. 

Women’s experiences in engineering are fraught with issues beyond their underrepresentation. Utilizing the concept of the double bind and intersectionality, this interpretive phenomenological study examined data from interviews with 32 first-year women undergraduate engineering students during their first few weeks of college to understand how women’s early experiences inform the ways they position themselves in engineering. We were concerned with how women’s self-understanding is inherently intertwined with how they make calculated moves based on contradictory messaging about their competence and suitability for engineering both prior to and early on in their college experience. We found that women engineering students of all races and ethnicities begin college already caught in a double bind that forces them to navigate conflicting social expectations, which are intensified and reified during their early college experiences as they face the entrenched gender expectations in engineering. For women of Color, the whiteness of the space uniquely heightened, differentiated, and situated their experiences. We conclude our discussion with implications that center equity in both experiences and outcomes