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Rigor/Us: Building Boundaries and Disciplining Diversity with Standards of Merit
Abstract
Rigor is the aspirational quality academics apply to disciplinary standards of quality. Rigor's particular role in engineering created conditions for its transfer and adaptation in the recently emergent discipline of engineering education research. ‘Rigorous engineering education research’ and the related ‘evidence-based’ research and practice movement in STEM education have resulted in a proliferation of boundary drawing exercises that mimic those in engineering disciplines, shaping the development of new knowledge and ‘improved’ practice in engineering education. Rigor accomplishes dirty deeds, however, serving three primary ends across engineering, engineering education, and engineering education research: disciplining, demarcating boundaries, and demonstrating white male heterosexual privilege. Understanding how rigor reproduces inequality, we cannot reinvent it but rather must relinquish it, looking to alternative conceptualizations for evaluating knowledge, welcoming diverse ways of knowing, doing, and being, and moving from compliance to engagement, from rigor to vigor.
... For this segment of the theory synthesis (Jaakkola, 2020), I draw on the cri�cal research on the engineering educa�on and professional culture, which has been shown to be a barrier to broader inclusion of not only neurodivergent and disabled students, but also those with other underrepresented iden��es like gender/sex, race or ethnicity, sexuality, and other iden��es like being a first-genera�on or low-income student (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Heybach & Pickup, 2017;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Liptow, et al., 2016;Riley, 2013Riley, , 2017Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Slaton, 2010Slaton, , 2013Stonyer, 2001;Svyantek, 2016). I incorporate engineering history (Frehill;2004;Oldenziel, 1999), empirical research on underrepresented student experiences of exclusions (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Robert, 2023), and conceptual and empirical papers examining cultural values like epistemological rigidity (Baille & Armstrong, 2013;Bucciarelli, 2009;Cech, 2013Cech, , 2014Douglas et al, 2010;Godfrey & Parker, 2010;Heybach & Pickup, 2017), and extreme rigor, weeding out, and the meritocracy (Cech, 2013;Riley, 2017;Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Seron et al., 2018) that have been iden�fied as problema�c to inclusion and access. ...
... For this segment of the theory synthesis (Jaakkola, 2020), I draw on the cri�cal research on the engineering educa�on and professional culture, which has been shown to be a barrier to broader inclusion of not only neurodivergent and disabled students, but also those with other underrepresented iden��es like gender/sex, race or ethnicity, sexuality, and other iden��es like being a first-genera�on or low-income student (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Heybach & Pickup, 2017;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Liptow, et al., 2016;Riley, 2013Riley, , 2017Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Slaton, 2010Slaton, , 2013Stonyer, 2001;Svyantek, 2016). I incorporate engineering history (Frehill;2004;Oldenziel, 1999), empirical research on underrepresented student experiences of exclusions (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Robert, 2023), and conceptual and empirical papers examining cultural values like epistemological rigidity (Baille & Armstrong, 2013;Bucciarelli, 2009;Cech, 2013Cech, , 2014Douglas et al, 2010;Godfrey & Parker, 2010;Heybach & Pickup, 2017), and extreme rigor, weeding out, and the meritocracy (Cech, 2013;Riley, 2017;Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Seron et al., 2018) that have been iden�fied as problema�c to inclusion and access. Several papers have pointed out the lack of visibility of disabili�es in engineering educa�on among faculty, students, and staff generally (Riley, 2017;Slaton, 2013;Svyantek, 2016), while a few have focused on neurodivergent student experiences in engineering educa�on (Chrysochoou et al., 2022;Cueller et al., 2022;Kouo et al., 2021;Robert, 2023;Taylor et al., 2019). ...
... I incorporate engineering history (Frehill;2004;Oldenziel, 1999), empirical research on underrepresented student experiences of exclusions (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Robert, 2023), and conceptual and empirical papers examining cultural values like epistemological rigidity (Baille & Armstrong, 2013;Bucciarelli, 2009;Cech, 2013Cech, , 2014Douglas et al, 2010;Godfrey & Parker, 2010;Heybach & Pickup, 2017), and extreme rigor, weeding out, and the meritocracy (Cech, 2013;Riley, 2017;Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Seron et al., 2018) that have been iden�fied as problema�c to inclusion and access. Several papers have pointed out the lack of visibility of disabili�es in engineering educa�on among faculty, students, and staff generally (Riley, 2017;Slaton, 2013;Svyantek, 2016), while a few have focused on neurodivergent student experiences in engineering educa�on (Chrysochoou et al., 2022;Cueller et al., 2022;Kouo et al., 2021;Robert, 2023;Taylor et al., 2019). ...
... The meme reads "20 minutes after engineering school," insinuating that the black individual (Bubba) could not continue to perform in engineering. A hyperbole stating 20 minutes is shown to exaggerate how difficult engineering is perceived to be, but also to show how quickly a person is giving up, and in this case it portrays a BIPOC individual perhaps as a way demonstrate they do not work hard enough to endure the difficult work of engineering or cannot stay in engineering [51,52]. Contextually speaking, the phrase "I want to go home" shows that Bubba is giving up after just a few minutes of being exposed to engineering and not willing to prioritizing engineering. ...
... For example, Meme # 356 ( Figure 5) shows a cheerful white man being optimistic for getting a slightly higher score in an exam than the average. There are several aspects being described in this meme, such as the difficulty of engineering (demonstrated by the fact that everyone scored low in the test) [31,52], the idea that engineers are not emotionally demonstrative (despite having failed a test) [31], and the framing of white individuals as being successful while the rest may be framed as failures [8,39]. Memes often centered around witty and confident white engineers, indicating that there is a predominance of whiteness in engineering [56]. ...
... This alternative form of portraying a superhero, has a similar effect of demonstrating hypermasculinity in engineering by using the images of individuals (predominantly white) whose character is representative of a superhuman showing power and authority (either by supernatural traits or by having above-average intelligence, being rich, and calculating). The message of hypermasculinity through superheroes is a compelling one, and one that shows engineering as something that is done with force, violence, or destruction (i.e., collateral damage); thus, showing the underlying historical ties between engineering and white male dominance [45,52]. The memes were not only depicting hypermasculinity and the dominance of white males in engineering, but there was a blurred line between hypermasculinity and sexism in engineering. ...
... While these numbers may seem too familiar for some in engineering and engineering education research, what these numbers show is that within this system which is often perceived as fair and objective [6], more palatable conceptualizations to justify the statistics are used instead of critically questioning Whiteness in engineering. The two most prevalent arguments are based on meritocratic and colorblind ideologies [8]. ...
... This position paper builds upon previous research that identified colorblindness and meritocracy as scripts of Whiteness [15]. We argue that, while meritocracy and colorblindness have been discussed in engineering education research [6], [7], [13], [15], [16], little action has been taken to dismantle meritocracy and colorblindness as pillars upholding Whiteness in engineering. Thus, through a historically contextualized interdisciplinary analysis, we seek to shift the conversation to focus on questioning the ways Whiteness affects pedagogy and research conducted in engineering education research. ...
... In the words of the late Dr. Barbara Love, you have to "interrupt invisibility" [84]. In this vein, many engineering scholars have called for the need to make Whiteness in engineering/education more visible [6], [15], [83], [85]- [87]. One way to do this is through the use of Critical Race Theory in engineering education [86]. ...
... Our purpose is to increase awareness, generate new decolonizing discourses, and support action and activism in engineering education toward improving student mental health and the inclusion and support of underrepresented students. Through examining these linkages and mechanisms (Apple, 2019;Riley, 2017), engineering educators and researchers can further explore the unforeseen consequences of unquestioned-and sometimes invisible-institutional prestige seeking on student experiences. This study explores the lived narratives of underrepresented STEM student experiences and their perceptions from within a prestige-seeking STEM institution. ...
... However, Mines reputation as a difficult and elite school in Colorado also created pride among family, parents, friends, and community, which in turn created pride in the participants. Indeed, within engineering education culture, suicide and suffering have historically been seen as indicators of a high-quality, rigorous quality school (Cross & Jensen, 2018;Riley, 2008Riley, , 2017. Creek is a legacy STEM student whose immigrant dad is a college professor in engineering and physics and she shared how he socialized his daughter from age 11 to endure the required suffering of engineering education (Robert, 2023). ...
... However, we also showed how these gaps are particularly salient for underrepresented students in STEM disciplines that epistemologically rest comfortably in quantitative measurements and explanations (Bucciarelli, 2009;Godfrey & Parker, 2010;Riley, 2017) and a hierarchical meritocracy that is culturally regarded as both normal and necessary for producing quality engineers (Cech, 2013(Cech, , 2014Riley, 2017;Seron et al., 2018). All three participants sensed a tension in the linkages between institutional prestige seeking and paradoxical campus DI&A discourses and fears of diluted rigor through accommodation of disabilities and intentional recruitment of underrepresented students. ...
... They corroborate the fact that discussions on the role of epistemology in engineering education are missing from our scholarship. Riley [12], [13] writes that despite education being a social scientific field, engineering education researchers prioritize positivist epistemologies borrowed from the scientific worldview of engineering. Relying solely on the scientific method for generating knowledge is called positivism by philosophers [13]. ...
... These decisions about epistemological boundary-making are enactments of power. Riley [12] points out how engineering educators readily dismiss ideas from schools of education on how to teach better. She provides examples of scholars who only adopt specific approaches based on 'learning sciences' and deem only certain epistemologies and methodologies worthy of transfer from education into engineering education [12]. ...
... Riley [12] points out how engineering educators readily dismiss ideas from schools of education on how to teach better. She provides examples of scholars who only adopt specific approaches based on 'learning sciences' and deem only certain epistemologies and methodologies worthy of transfer from education into engineering education [12]. Douglas et al. [11] make a compelling case for the need for epistemological diversity in EER to promote robust scholarship based on equity, acceptance, interdisciplinarity, and collaboration. ...
... These experiences can lead to mental and physical exhaustion. On the contrary, experiences/expectations that are deemed to not be rigorous may be seen as academically easy or uncomplicated (Riley, 2017) Rigor in the academic campus culture in higher education institutions has set a standard for students to achieve and display in and outside the classroom (Castillo-Montoya, 2018). Newer conceptions of rigor have emphasized "academic challenge that supports learning and growth for students" (Keller, 2018, p. 89). ...
... These more traditional ideas are linked with deep learning, equity-based learning, inquirybased learning, psychosocial rigor (Campbell, 2018b), the quantity of time in the lab , institutional quality, and value as demonstrated through rankings, limited access, and institutional prestige (Keller, 2018). Rigorous standards perpetuate and uphold power structures, often leading to underrepresentation, stereotype threat, limited support, and exclusion of marginalized groups, particularly at elite higher education institutions (Riley, 2017). These power structures can contribute to issues related to access and retention as well as create barriers to student engagement and academic success of marginalized students. ...
Hazing, a type of abusive behavior that can harm students and undermine university missions, has implications that extend beyond those individuals, groups, and communities directly involved. Our investigation drew on critical whiteness studies (CWS) to explore intersections of hazing and white supremacy. Campus hazing climate interviews (n = 345) at 12 higher education institutions in the United States comprised the dataset for qualitative analysis. Rigor and its sub-themes of measurement, competitiveness, proving worthiness, and suffering show how whiteness is reinscribed at the intersection of campus culture and hazing climate.
... Contemporary scholars, Littler [29] and Riley [30,31], while agreeing with Bourdieu's descriptive analysis of meritocracy, take a more prescriptive stance for the future of higher education. They argue if the field of higher education is to change, then meritocracy must be reimagined. ...
... They argue that schools ought to share responsibility with students for student success and that accessibility efforts should focus on equality of outcome as well as equality of access. Riley [31], writing on engineering higher education, also calls for increased efforts in engineering education directed toward collaboration, community and the social impact of engineering, moving away from a meritocratic, hegemonic vision of success. Table 1 shows the tensions that exist between meritocratic principles and diversity principles within my conceptual framework. ...
This study examined the experience of students within Canadian graduate engineering programs and explored how institutional culture impacted access to these programs and student support resources. The paper discusses how admission processes, institutional culture and support resources impact women within graduate engineering programs and presents recommendations to potentially widen student access and support student success. As part of a mixed methods study, 10 faculty and 20 students were interviewed at two large Canadian graduate engineering schools to gather data on participants' perceptions of admission processes, institutional culture and support resources. Equal numbers of women and men were interviewed to determine if gendered experiences or perceptions of the culture were experienced and all interview data was anonymized to protect the identity of participants. Findings indicate that informal practices, containing unspoken rules, ran parallel to formal admission processes; certain experiences of institutional culture were gendered, particularly around notions of success; and support systems were often lacking or insensitive to the needs of graduate students. Participants offered a number of suggestions to improve support systems. This paper increases our knowledge regarding Canadian graduate engineering schools by identifying realities parallel to formal admission practices, describing institutional culture, and analyzing graduate students' perception of support systems. It concludes that informal admission practices should be acknowledged to widen access, that institutional cultural change regarding DEI is problematic and support resources could be improved to better serve all graduate students, particularly women and other under-represented groups.
... Though many departments and universities will publicly and explicitly state that graduate students should not work for more than 40 hours per week for any reason, the research lab culture often contradicts these limitations [34]. This culture of working beyond 40 hours a week as a doctoral student is especially prevalent in science and engineering fields where ideas of rigor, merit, and effort are seemingly built into the fields themselves [35]. Much of the evidence regarding long working hours is anecdotal, often existing on online forums, news articles, or social media. ...
... Little if any research, exists on graduate students' values as they compare to their organizations'. However, since we know engineering and academia are spaces dominated by rigor and meritocratic ideals, constructs that reinforce white heterosexual male privilege, it could be said that the organizational values in engineering and academia will likely not reflect those of anyone other than those from the dominant identity [35]. Additionally, graduate students may experience a calling that allows them to put up with unpleasant work conditions, unethical behaviors, and misaligned values due to their internal feelings of meaning and purpose [40]. ...
... Engineering culture has been defined using this framework by first delineating artifacts in the first level, then interpreting common cultural values from students' interactions with these artifacts, before finally identifying the tacit knowledge underpinning the first two dimensions [20]. This third level describes a culture's oft subconscious solutions to external changes or internal merges (i.e., enculturation), but prior definitions lack elements of mental health, and research suggests beliefs and behaviors that promote wellness are not part of traditional engineering culture [21], [22]. Schein (1985). ...
... While some offered additional artifacts as a solution (such as workshops on time management), others delved deeper to suggest a change in cultural norms (like asset-based mindsets). Expectations in Engineering are learned engineering norms reinforced by artifacts of rigor, such as harsh grading practices or systems that reward suffering through hardship [17], [22]. It is important to note that expectations of high achievement or rigorous curriculum are not inherently detrimental to Ideas for how faculty, staff, or other engineering stakeholders could support undergraduate engineering health were summarized in the third theme, Student Self-Care and Wellness Resources. ...
... It is noteworthy that the emphasis of impostor feelings on intelligence or intellectual talent that transpires in affects of unworthiness, self-doubts or disappointment resonates with the literature about gender inequalities in STEM (Riley, 2017;Rohde et al., 2020). Regarding impostor feelings, in particular, Slank (2019) associates a culture of genius in academic environments that, in turn, reinforces ideas of intelligence as fixed with deeper feelings of impostorism. ...
... After coding completion, we identified patterns in the data aligned with our research questions. We sought a breadth of views rather than a single story (Anders & Lester, 2015;Riley, 2017), and while code frequency counts provided some initial guides (Silverman, 2006), we did not attach meaning to the actual values (Barbour, 2001) out of a concern that quantification would be misleading. ...
Background
Despite demands to make higher education more relevant beyond academia, and a growing body of work testifying to the benefits of work-relevance programs (e.g., work-placements, or internships) for both students and the companies that host them, there is limited information available for those aiming to optimize these programs. For example, few have explored the challenges and needs of internship supervisors. Here, we focus on the experiences of supervisors in biology and geology programs across three Norwegian institutions. Specifically, through a series of focus groups, we asked internship supervisors about their motivations for serving as student mentors, any challenges they had faced, and what higher-education institutions could do to better prepare them for hosting students at their workplaces.
Results
Key challenges faced by supervisors include the need to tailor placements to individual student needs and capabilities, navigating the constraints imposed by academic structures, and addressing communication gaps between students, institutions, and workplace supervisors. Internship supervisors suggest enhancing communication strategies to better define roles and expectations, increasing support and training for supervisors, and establishing clearer, more collaborative frameworks for setting learning objectives with students.
Conclusions
The supervisors’ suggestions aim to ensure that internships are mutually beneficial, supporting both students' educational outcomes and the workplace needs. By focusing on the supervisor's perspective, we provide valuable insights into one aspect of implementing effective and rewarding internships (i.e., supervisor preparation), thereby suggesting pathways for future improvements in these high-impact educational practices.
... The belief in the positivistic, systematic approach is so strong that it is maintained even when there is methodological evidence it is not working. These notions are cradled within the false notions of engineering as objective (Lord et al., 2019), and in the pursuit of "rigor" (Riley, 2017) and validity. ...
... When the majority of people have similar privileges (social identities, lived experiences, etc.), it tends to underpin the notion that the consensus perspective is the default and therefore objective perspective, and that different perspectives are subjective or false (Riley 2017). For those with many privileged aspects to their positionality, the concept of double consciousness might help explore the impact of one's positionality on one's project. ...
Scientific research is not value-neutral but builds on the stated and unstated values of those leading the research, influencing the choice of study topics; decisions about methods, judgments, or inferences with data; and considerations of the consequences of errors. In some fields, researchers create a positionality statement to disclose bias as a way to manage or neutralize the influence of values. Positionality refers to the way in which an individual’s worldview, and thus perceptions and research activities, is shaped by the frameworks, social identities, lived experiences, and sociopolitical context within which they live. Thinking about positionality is a valuable, yet missing, element for practitioners of participatory sciences. In this essay, we suggest that those leading participatory science projects explore their positionality, irrespective of whether or not they choose to disclose it, in order to manage values for several goals: research integrity, ethical data practices, and equity and inclusion. By reviewing and synthesizing literature, we created a tool to help leaders of participatory science projects think reflectively (for awareness of their identities and characteristics) and reflexively (from an external position for critical observation of themselves) to recognize their influence on project design and implementation. We view examining positionality as a precursor to anticipating and taking actions to minimize epistemic injustices and ultimately enhance the unique capacity of each project to advance equity, inclusion, and scientific productivity.
... Autobiographical and autoethnographic research methods enable researchers to explore how theory and existing literature relate to their own experiences as designers, particularly as these experiences involve issues of equity and justice [9,15,54]. Only one reviewed paper [42] used autoethnographic methods to generate design knowledge (the same paper that explored issues of equity and justice); this is likely because personal and experiential knowledge has traditionally been devalued in engineering spaces [61,62]. However, autobiographical narrative methods can make important contributions to problematizing accepted or taken for granted design knowledge (such as prescriptive design process models or recommended design practices). ...
Narrative inquiry is a form of qualitative research in which researchers derive meaning from narratives of individuals’ experiences. This scoping literature review explored how narrative methods have been used to generate engineering design knowledge. Sixteen papers met the author’s inclusion criteria. The author reviewed these papers to identify their research questions, the types of narratives employed to answer these research questions, and the methods that researchers used to derive meaning from their narratives. Five papers involved arts-based narratives: four analyzed visualizations of students’ design processes while one synthesized student design processes into a descriptive timeline. Five papers analyzed documentary narratives comprised of audio or video recordings of designers engaged in design work. Five papers analyzed biographical narratives derived from interviews with designers or from ethnographic study of design projects. Only one paper used an autobiographical narrative to examine liberatory design practices. Fourteen papers addressed their study aims by applying categorizing analysis processes to narratives. Only two papers created narratives from data as a method to explain their findings. Opportunities for deeper engagement with narrative methods in engineering design research include leveraging arts-based narratives to study experienced designers, synthesizing explanatory narratives, leveraging narratives to study design equity, and leveraging autobiographical narratives.
... Historically, the culture of engineering has been highly selective, with narrow conceptualizations of appropriate knowledge, standards, merit, and rigor (Blair-Loy and Cech, 2022;Riley, 2017;Slaton, 2010). This culture and associated practices in engineering have contributed to the skewed demographics of engineering students concerning race/ethnicity (Slaton, 2010). ...
... Meaningful work is driven by nothing more than passion (McNair, 2019). Teachers can encourage and develop this in students by helping them focus on their own personal interests and connecting the dots regarding the relevance and importance of the material being covered (Riley, 2017). Challenging students to set personal learning goals and encouraging question asking will aid your objective as well (Jackson, 2009). ...
... These studies are often concerned with getting an understanding of what the emerging research trends are and where EER is conducted (e.g., Jesiek et al., 2011;Qiu & Natarajarathinam, 2023;. Others focus on how research is done within EER, including meta-analyses (e.g., Koro-Ljungberg & Douglas, 2008), analyses on used methodologies and research frameworks (e.g., Malmi et al., 2018) or discourses and discourse analyses on quality, rigor and scholarliness (e.g., Edström, 2017;Klassen & Case, 2022;Riley, 2017). ...
Global challenges such as climate change lead to increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that pose numerous challenges for socio-technical systems. Engineers are jointly responsible for the design of these systems. Thus, engineering students need to be enabled to build and design complex systems that adapt to sudden disturbances, i.e., resilient systems. Doing so requires different, novel ways of thinking and acting that go beyond established problem-solving skills. These novel ways of thinking and acting can be subsumed under resilience thinking, planning and management.
The demand for engineering professionals to be competent at designing resilient systems is well-reported. Despite that, there is hardly any research on systems resilience in engineering education. Existing research suggests that engineers are insufficiently trained to design resilient systems because the necessary competencies are not addressed in their education.
This thesis addresses this gap by contributing not only to generating an understanding of the relevance of resilience in engineering education, but also to developing a framework to improve engineering education practice. This is done by questioning the current state of the art from a resilience thinking perspective aimed at better preparing engineering students to design resilient systems. Due to the lack of research on resilience in engineering education, the research approach was iteratively and systematically developed, where each study raises the research questions for the following ones. Based on an interpretivist educational research perspective, the research underlying this thesis was approached using different methodologies, which were guided by the respective research questions. In total, seven studies were conducted that build on and complement each other. These have three foci: resilience in engineering education research, resilience-related competencies in engineering education, and practical applications in and implications for teaching.
By addressing both scholarliness and usefulness, this thesis presents a holistic approach to resilience in engineering education, combining theory and practice. To this effect, this thesis develops the state of the art by providing a theoretical framework for defining and categorizing the concept of resilience within engineering education research as well as for resilience-related competencies, contributing to both research and practice. Furthermore, this thesis provides and suggests concrete examples for teaching, learning and assessment activities to foster engineering students’ competency development in terms of resilience. Implications for engineering education practice include the design of course concepts which holistically integrate problem- and case-based learning as well as deep reflection and feedback methods.
Finally, this thesis highlights both the lack of and the need for a (better) integration of resilience in engineering education research and practice. Subsequently, this thesis concludes that the current practice in engineering education does not adequately prepare students to design resilient systems, as required competencies for this purpose are not sufficiently addressed in their studies. Thus, the results of this thesis indicate both challenges and opportunities in terms of changing the paradigm of engineering education towards a future-oriented education that specifically enhances competencies for designing resilient systems.
... For well over a decade, there have been numerous critiques of the social/technical dualism present in engineering education and calls to disrupt it [1]. Researchers have varying motivations for this focus, including to better prepare students for engineering practice, which is inherently sociotechnical [2]; to increase the sense of belonging of historically excluded students, who are more likely to be interested in the social aspects [3]; and to create better societal outcomes that consider justice [4,5,6]. Attempts to disrupt the social/technical dualism and the apolitical nature of traditional engineering education have included revising stand-alone ethics courses and adding sociotechnical components to traditional engineering courses, such as design courses [7][8][9][10]. ...
... Storytelling as a method is not simply about telling stories. Rather it is essential that the method is applied in a way that is embedded with quality and "rigour" (Riley, 2017) towards the underlying foundations and rationale for storytelling in the first place. Stories must not conflate fiction and non-fiction, where stories are told through the research "to show them as truthful, reliable, and a result of rigorous study" (Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2023, p. 12). ...
... This theme encompasses instances where participants encountered actions that conveyed the normativity of male and masculine behaviors, effectively rendering other gender identities invisible. These incidents shed light on the prevalent hypermasculine culture in engineering [47][48][49]. For instance, Leoa firstgeneration Mexican American mechanical engineering studentobserved a lack of visibility of LGBTQIA+ students in engineering: ...
... Meritocracy emphasizes that anyone can succeed with hard work and determination, which implies that minoritized students are unsuccessful for lack of effort on their part (Pawley, 2019). Rigor maintains white/maleness in STEM departments through unnecessary workloads, inflexible requirements, and lack of recognition of contributions of diverse others (Riley, 2017). Therefore, given the phenomenon of stress faced by minoritized students, this work posits that mentoring can facilitate positive coping mechanisms in minoritized undergraduate students in STEM higher education. ...
... Disciplinary cultures, defined by their unique set of norms, values, and practices, shape how members of a discipline interact and approach their work (Multrus, 2004). For instance, engineering culture is characterized by lecturer-centered teaching, an emphasis on practical problem-solving and technical focus, and a preference for group norms over individual preferences, aligning with traditional masculine traits (e.g., Gilbert, 2009;Multrus, 2004;Riley, 2017, Schaeper, 1997. This culture can inadvertently result in a gendered environment, which can be challenging for women who do not closely identify with these traits (e.g., Litzler & Young, 2012;Lojewski, 2011). ...
Gendered field-of-study choice is a lively topic of discussion. The explanation usually given for the fact that women are still an exception in typically ‘male’ fields—particularly STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)—employs domain-specific stereotypes regarding men’s and women’s ‘natural’ abilities in different fields. The central argument of our study is that domain-specific gender stereotypes help explain why few women enter such fields; however, they are not necessarily the driving forces behind the finding that female students who chose typically male subjects have weaker academic self-concepts than their male peers. If it were only domain-specific gender stereotypes that influence students’ perceptions of their abilities, we should find the opposite result in typically female fields of study and no differences in gender-mixed fields. Because existing studies often focus on the male-dominated STEM domain alone, research may have drawn the wrong conclusions. By comparing students in male-dominated, female-dominated, and gender-mixed fields of study, we ask: Does gender composition in the field of study matter for gender disparities in college (university) students’ academic self-concepts? Using data from 10,425 students in the German National Educational Panel Study, our results suggest that it is not only in male-dominated fields of study that women rate their own abilities to be poorer than men rate theirs; the same is true in female-dominated and gender-mixed fields. Therefore, domain-specific gender stereotypes regarding students’ abilities do not (alone) seem to drive gender disparities in STEM students’ perception of their own abilities. No matter what academic field we consider, female students generally exhibit weaker academic self-concepts; however, the gap is most pronounced in male-dominated fields.
... The authors reference the quality/rigor distinction to highlight rigor's exclusive connotations (Riley, 2017) and to position quality as the more epistemologically inclusive approach. However, I would argue that quality and rigor are actually not very different words outside of the engineering education research methods discourse, quality meaning "the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something" (Oxford/Google) and rigor meaning "the quality of being extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate" (Oxford/Google). ...
... For students who do not fit the predominant mold of an engineer, their position within the engineering community is often contested (Pawley, 2012a(Pawley, , 2012b. As a result, ways of knowing in engineering can differentially enable students to form an engineering identity, depending on how knowledge is selected, organized, bounded, delivered, valued, and evaluated (e.g., Claris & Riley, 2012;Downey, 2015;Riley, 2017). Knowledge and judgments of expertise inflected by gender, race, and socioeconomic class bias have been baked into engineering (Calvert, 1967;Smith Rolston & Cox, 2015;Slaton, 2010) and, subsequently, the dominant engineering identities encountered by students. ...
Background
Identifying as an engineer is essential for belonging and student success, yet the social context and professional norms make it more difficult for some students to establish an identity as an engineer.
Purpose/Hypothesis
This study investigated whether first‐generation college students' funds of knowledge supported their engineering role identity.
Design/Methods
Data came from a survey administered across the United States western, southern, and mountain regions in the fall semester of 2018. Only the sample of students who indicated they were the first in their families to attend college was used in the analysis ( n = 378). Structural equation modeling was used to understand how first‐generation college students' funds of knowledge supported their engineering role identity; measurement invariance was examined to ensure that the model was valid for women and men alike.
Results
First‐generation college students' funds of knowledge individually supported the components of the engineering role identity development process. Tinkering knowledge from home and perspective‐taking helped inform interest and performance/competence beliefs. First‐generation college students' bids for external recognition were supported through their mediational skills, their connecting experiences, and their local network of college friends. The bundle of advice, resources, and emotional support from family members was the only fund of knowledge that directly supported students' perceptions of themselves as engineers.
Conclusions
The relationships we established between first‐generation college students' funds of knowledge and emerging engineering role identities call for engineering educators to integrate students' funds of knowledge into engineering learning and to broaden disciplinary norms of what counts as engineering‐relevant knowledge.
... Because engineering education research is expected to follow a process or a method that includes the use of "formal research questions, theoretical grounding, [and] appropriate methodologies" (Riley, 2017, p. 250), the research process often takes longer: engineering education research is expected to demonstrate "rigor" in the generation of knowledge (Riley, 2017). Consequently, the time that the research process takes can result in data not being readily available to practitioners. ...
... Third, equity-centered scholars have begun to argue for "small-n research" as a means for unpacking the oppressive power relations that impact marginalized students. With engineering education's preference for generalizability and large sample sizes, marginalized groups by definition are pushed out of the dominant academic discourse since their populations are considered too small to be statistically significant (Riley, 2017;Slaton & Pawley, 2018). Slaton and Pawley argue that "small-n" research is needed to recenter marginalized student needs in policymaking and redress the persistent inequities that are ignored by default (2018). ...
... In engineering, we have heard about "rigor" (Riley, 2017), and have seen the ways it can shape faculty beliefs. In developing and implementing design challenges, we were asking even the enthusiastic faculty to make a leap of faith; we took them out of their comfort zones. ...
Engineering is fundamentally about design, yet many undergraduate programs offer limited opportunities for students to learn to design. This design case reports on a grant-funded effort to revolutionize how chemical engineering is taught. Prior to this effort, our chemical engineering program was like many, offering core courses primarily taught through lectures and problem sets. While some faculty referenced examples, students had few opportunities to construct and apply what they were learning. Spearheaded by a team that included the department chair, a learning scientist, a teaching-intensive faculty member, and faculty heavily engaged with the undergraduate program, we developed and implemented design challenges in core chemical engineering courses. We began by co-designing with students and faculty, initially focusing on the first two chemical engineering courses students take. We then developed templates and strategies that supported other faculty-student teams to expand the approach into more courses. Across seven years of data collection and iterative refinements, we developed a framework that offers guidance as we continue to support new faculty in threading design challenges through core content-focused courses. We share insights from our process that supported us in navigating through challenging questions and concerns.
... A significant body of work has emphasized how structural and cultural norms replicate Whiteness and masculinity in engineering, and this work emphasizes the need to dismantle structures that perpetuate inequity within engineering education [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Other work has examined how these norms are linked to particular ways of being, thinking, and knowing that continuously limit who can do engineering [9], who belongs in engineering [10], and what counts as engineering [11][12]. This enculturation often results in the underutilization of students' potential for innovation and creates exclusionary spaces for many engineering students. ...
... The myth of objective, neutral "rigor" in engineering education [23] is linked to the myth of the masculine, white engineer who built America [24]. Both have contributed to engineering's exclusivity and tendency to marginalize those who challenge the myths. ...
... In addition, strengths-based and other assets-focused models of mentoring in engineering and computer science -even those that integrate a social justice perspective -often ignore the ways in which engineering and computing disciplinary cultures, themselves, assume that students are "in deficit" -particularly those from groups that are underrepresented and, in some cases, are explicitly designed to identify these "deficit students" and weed them out [45]. ...
... This role model function of faculty is important [38]. For example, in the name of 'rigor' [58] engineering faculty may avoid giving students accommodations which could reduce their failure rates in courses. If students contrast their experiences in engineering courses with nonengineering courses [39] they may conclude that engineering itself is uncaring as opposed to attributing the lack of care to an individual instructor or higher education. ...
... Engineering exists as a discipline that has been characterized as depoliticized and meritocratic, ideologies which run counter to those that typically undergird participation in labor unions and the undertaking of liberatory structural alterations [6][7][8]. Riley has discussed how prevailing forms of rigor in engineering, engineering education, and engineering education research reproduce inequality and function primarily to discipline, demarcate boundaries, and demonstrate white male heterosexual privilege, as well as the need to seek alternatives for evaluating knowledge [9]. Slaton and Pawley further demonstrate ways that prevailing standards for engineering education research are assembled from politics that run counter to and stigmatize qualitative and small-n studies [10]. ...
... Currently, several more handbooks in engineering education are published or forthcoming, including the International Handbook in Engineering Education Research (Johri 2023) and the Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education (SEFI 2022). As well, the interest in comparative work on EER globally is rising (Deters et al. 2023;Kumar et al. 2021;), and the debates on what defines rigour in EER and its relevance (Riley 2017) and how to classify the field continue. define EER as a second order regiona space that builds on engineering and education as separate regions that come from singulars of science and mathematics, and sociology and psychology. ...
... Engineers for good, however, learn and work in institutions and organizations that have been historically co-constructed with these traditional engineering norms. In turn, this co-construction shapes what engineering expertise is by favoring the corporate bottom-line and standardized conceptions of "rigorous" engineering practice [25]. For example, particular areas of engineering expertise are popular because they were at one time prioritized in commercial markets and military applications. ...
... Similar to the ways that social systems are often presumed to be fair, a classroom interaction or educational system is often presumed fair and constructed as a competition (common in engineering). The norm of competition and meritocracy construct and perpetuate harmful notions of rigor [21]. In engineering culture, many come to believe that achievements are the result of a well-functioning meritocracy [17] and that DEI initiatives focused on harm reduction would undermine that worldview [22]. ...
... According to authors in this review, the instability displaced students experience as they develop their professional identities was even more threatening when students are enrolled in engineering. This was primarily due to the culture of engineering and its focus on efficiency and rigor in the curriculum [31], evidenced by an "efficient and cost-effective transfer of a certain amount of content in a lockstep process" [77] (p. 258). ...
... As a long-lasting consequence, typical engineering curricula in the 21st Century are entrenched with hidden elements [Polmear et al., 2019;Villanueva, 2018] that discourage the participation of marginalized people. Engineering collegiate cultures can also become value-neutral, where an over-emphasis on 'rigor' [Riley, 2017] can disproportionately impact marginalized people in engineering spaces and promote deficit-based instructional practices. These formative pieces lay the foundation for engineering professional spaces to perpetuate, to this day, sexist [Dietz et al., 2021;Smith & Gayles, 2018;Powell & Sang, 2015;Faulkner, 2009], racist [Long, 2021;Douglas et al., 2020], and homophobic [Denissen & Saguy, 2014] workplace cultures. ...
An increased interest in expanding engineering education with youth brings with it a multitude of approaches toward developing engineering programming. In this article, I explore how developing programming for the purpose of fostering liberatory design offers a means of supporting young people in both personally consequential and technically relevant design work. Qualitatively following community‐based engineering design work with seven Youth of Color over 3 years of observation and interview, I document how flexible front‐end design work aided in moments of liberatory design possibility. Subsequently, these moments supported these young peoples' connection engineering and their engagement in canonically recognizable design work. My work reinforces and expands recent work that calls for youth‐centered, justice‐oriented engineering work beyond tech‐specific experiences. Further, youths' experiences raise questions about the development of future engineering experiences for all young people, not just those seeking to pursue engineering.
Ethics is central to scientific and engineering research and practice, but a key challenge for promoting students’ ethical formation involves enhancing faculty members’ ability and confidence in embedding positive ethical learning experiences into their curriculums. To this end, this paper explores changes in faculty members’ approaches to and perceptions of ethics education following their participation in a multi-year interdisciplinary faculty learning community (FLC). We conducted and thematically analyzed semi-structured interviews with 11 participants following the second year of the FLC. Qualitative themes suggested that, following two years of FLC participation, faculty members (1) were better able to articulate their conceptualizations of ethics; (2) became cognizant of how personal experiences, views, and beliefs informed how they introduced ethics into their curriculum; and (3) developed and lived instructional principles that guided their ethics teaching. Results thus suggested that faculty members benefitted from exploring, discussing, and teaching ethics, which (in turn) enabled them to see new opportunities and become confident in integrating ethics into their courses in meaningful ways that aligned with their scholarly identities. Taken together, these data suggest faculty became agents of change for designing, implementing, and refining ethics-related instructional efforts in STEM. This work can guide others interested in designing faculty learning communities to promote instructional skill development, faculty members’ awareness of their ethical values, and their ability and agency to design and integrate ethics learning activities alongside departmental peers in an intentional and continuous manner.
Background
Latinos/as/xs continue to face many barriers as they pursue engineering degrees, including remedial placement, lack of access to well‐funded schools, and high poverty rates. We use the concept of arrebatos to describe the internal reckoning that Latino/a/x engineering students experience through their journeys, particularly focusing on the impact of socioeconomic inequalities.
Purpose
To bring counternarratives in engineering education research focusing on the experiences and lived realities of low‐income Latino/a/x engineering students. These counternarratives are an important step in interrogating systemic biases and exclusionary cultures, practices, and policies at HSIs and emerging HSIs and within engineering programs.
Methods
Pláticas were conducted with 22 Latino/a/x engineering undergraduates from four different universities in the US Southwest. These pláticas were coded and analyzed drawing from Anzaldúa's theoretical concept of el arrebato . Special attention was given to participants' arrebatos triggered by their college experiences as low‐income individuals.
Results
Analysis indicates that Latino/a/x engineering students' a rrebatos arise from events that shake up the foundation of their own identity, including an institutional lack of sociopolitical consciousness. This lack of consciousness becomes evident not only in individuals' attitudes toward these students but also in institutional policies that put them at a further disadvantage.
Conclusions
Findings have implications for engineering programs, particularly at HSIs and emerging HSIs regarding the creation of policies and practices that aim to secure the retention of low‐income Latino/a/x engineering students and alleviate the systemic barrier they face by affirming the practice of servingness.
Background
Engineering culture research to date has described the culture as rigid, chilly, and posing many barriers to entry. However, the COVID‐19 pandemic provided an important opportunity to explore how engineering culture responds to a major disruption.
Purpose
The purposes of this study are to understand how elements of engineering culture emerged in mechanical engineering students' perceptions of their classroom experiences during the pandemic and how their experiences varied across two national contexts.
Method
This qualitative comparative case study examines undergraduate mechanical engineering students' perceptions of their experiences taking courses during the pandemic at two universities—one in the United States and one in South Africa. Semistructured interviews were conducted across both sites with 21 students and contextualized with 3 faculty member interviews. Student interviews were analyzed using an iterative process of deductive coding, inductive coding, and pattern coding.
Results
We identified two key themes that characterized participants' experiences during the pandemic: hardness and access to resources. We found that students at both sites experienced two types of hardness—intrinsic and constructed—and were more critical of constructed forms of hardness. We found that the South African university's response to facilitating student access to resources was viewed by students as more effective when compared with the US university.
Conclusions
We found that hardness remained a central feature of engineering culture, based on student perceptions, and found that students expressed awareness of resource‐related differences. A key distinction emerged between intrinsic and constructed hardness.
Ramirez and Lindhard have defined key learnings as Education, 4th Industrial Revolution and Problem Solving. These are analysed by reviewing my own publications, through the recent development of the 4th Revolution as defined in the BRICS Strategy dated July 2018 and by applying Value Systems and Spiral Dynamics of Beck and Cowan.
Background
Design is essential to the engineering profession and plays a crucial role in preparation for future practice. Research investigating variations of how professional designers experience, give meaning to, and approach design can inform the ways we characterize, assess, and facilitate design learning. This may also have significant implications for preparing future engineering professionals to collaborate within and across disciplines. Purpose (Hypothesis)The goal of the study was to reveal and investigate critical differences in how designers from within and outside of engineering disciplines understand what it means to design, and how those understandings are evident in their approaches to and progression through design work. Design/MethodA qualitative research approach called phenomenography was used to investigate critical variations in how individuals experience and understand design. Twenty practicing designers were interviewed regarding their design experiences, how they approach design, and the ways they understand design. Conclusions
Six qualitatively distinct lenses on how individuals across disciplines experience and come to understand design emerged, comprising a phenomenographic “outcome space.” These include design as (1) evidencebased decision-making, (2) organized translation, (3) personal synthesis, (4) intentional progression, (5) directed creative exploration, and (6) freedom. Theoretical implications include an understanding of how design skills and knowledge come together to form a design approach, while practical implications emphasize structuring variation-based reflection, which can facilitate common ground as a result of recognizing differ “design lenses.”
Engineering education research (EER) has emerged over the past ten years as a distinct field or discipline. This analysis of EER contributes to science studies literature with a case examining the functions of methodology discourses in an emerging social science field. It demonstrates that methodology discourses have played a central role in the construction and development of the field of engineering education, and that they have done so primarily through boundary work. The article begins with an overview of the emerging field of engineering education research. I then situate the case within relevant bodies of literature on methodology discourses and boundary work. Following that, I identify two methodology discourses – rigor and methodological diversity – and discuss how they contributed to the construction and ongoing development of engineering education research as a field. The article concludes with a discussion of how the findings relate to prior science studies research on methodology discourses and boundary work and implications for future research.
Keywords
Boundary work, disciplinary development, engineering education research, methodology discourses, rigor, academic capital
I chose my critics well. All of their comments are helpful. From Lenore Langsdorf, I get a clearer sense of what I did. From Rachel Falmagne, I get a sense of where I might go next in terms of questions that remain. And especially from Adele Clarke, perhaps most difficultly, I get a sense of what I might have done differently to make this book stronger.
Getting Lost is an experiment in and of method against the normative critical framework of much feminist methodology in order to ask: if it is what it does, in a nominalist vein, what then is feminist methodology? The answers the book puts forward include: effaced, abjected, uncertain, engaged, reflex-ive (perhaps to a fault), and deeply invested in a sustained ethical engagement with those we study, particularly those with less power, while troubling what Adele terms “confession, testimonial and the intrusiveness of much research.” Situated as an index of more general tensions in the human sciences, I focus on how feminist methodology engages with a problematic of loss in taking fuller account of the fall into language and the loss of pure presence.
The book’s sensibility is toward that which shakes any assured ontology of the “real,” of presence and absence, a post-critical logic of haunting and undecidables. In this, it is important to remember that my methodological musings collected in the book are grounded in Troubling the Angels: Women Living with HIV/AIDS,1 a study that preceded the “new” anti-retroviral treatments of the mid-1990s. Hence this was, in many senses, a study of living with dying. Not-knowing was not difficult in such a space and I felt keenly how not wanting to not know is a violence that subsumes the Other into the Same. Abstracting a philosophy of inquiry from an archive of such work set me up well to explore the enablements that might be imagined from loss.
The genealogical period of Getting Lost, the questions that permeate it, its location in a political history of truth, is surely part of broader and deeper shifts in the doing of science, informed by arguments across a host of disciplines and interdisciplines, including my own position in educational research with its repositivization.2 Here many “qualitative researchers” are caught in paradigm wars we had dared to dream long over.
Getting Lost is informed also by the fieldwork of Troubling the Angels and the responsibility of being invited in to tell other people’s stories. Perhaps too clever by far in refusing to tell the “tidy tale” of these women’s struggles, I was in over my head. “This work is beyond me” was my mantra throughout the writing of Troubling the Angels.3
Part of this dizziness in writing Getting Lost was that it is of the future pluperfect tense of “what will have been said.”4 In one of the endless books on Nietzsche, I read of his “striking discovery” that in Sunrise and The Gay Science he may have “‘already provided the commentary [to Zarathustra]—before writing the text.’”5 Nietzsche viewed it as both a masterstroke and an act of folly on his part to compose the commentaries before the actual text. And so it was with the somewhat strange time of Getting Lost. Written before, during, and after Troubling the Angels, a sort of “folding forward” into a-book-that-was-not-yet inhabited the first text, Troubling the Angels. This strange time resulted in a poly-temporal dialogue across texts, time, and researching selves where I functioned as both author and (auto)critic of books that did not yet exist. Getting Lost, then, is a palimpsest where primary and secondary texts collapse into trace structures of one another that fold both backward and forward into books full of concealments and not knowings in an uncanny time of what “will always have already taken place.”
In sum, putting what Spivak terms an “identification crisis” around decol-onization front and center,6Getting Lost situates feminist ethnography as a seismograph of cultural shifts and intellectual movements in asking how research based knowledge remains possible after so much...
Explanations for women's continued underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have popularly employed a "leaky pipeline" metaphor. Recently, however, some have found the pipeline metaphor lacking in explanatory power for dealing with subtle, yet pervasive barriers embedded in specific cultures of engineering. The tension between culturally prescribed notions of masculinity, femininity, and engineering identities is one such barrier. Ethnographic interviews of 118 engineering undergraduates revealed multiple and shifting projects of constructing and claiming certain femininities and masculinities associated with engineering. Our analysis uses an intersection of feminist and discourse theory for a critical examination of multiple discourses contributing to the gendering of images, roles, positions, and a particular engineering discipline within our college and university culture. Loosened from the boundaries of gendered norms, this particular engineering discipline has become more "inviteful" to both women and men but requires different identity projects from each. Our goal is to contribute to discussions about gendered identities and cultures in engineering and to add our support to an emerging model in engineering education, the boundary model, for conceptualizing the movement of students into, across, and through the various domains of engineering.
Explanations for women's continued underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have popularly employed a "leaky pipeline" metaphor. Recently, however, some have found the pipeline metaphor lacking in explanatory power for dealing with subtle, yet pervasive barriers embedded in specific cultures of engineering. The tension between culturally prescribed notions of masculinity, femininity, and engineering identities is one such barrier. Ethnographic interviews of 118 engineering undergraduates revealed multiple and shifting projects of constructing and claiming certain femininities and masculinities associated with engineering. Our analysis uses an intersection of feminist and discourse theory for a critical examination of multiple discourses contributing to the gendering of images, roles, positions, and a particular engineering discipline within our college and university culture. Loosened from the boundaries of gendered norms, this particular engineering discipline has become more "inviteful" to both women and men but requires different identity projects from each. Our goal is to contribute to discussions about gendered identities and cultures in engineering and to add our support to an emerging model in engineering education, the boundary model, for conceptualizing the movement of students into, across, and through the various domains of engineering.
Recent attempts by American colleges and universities to teach ethics for scientists and engineers deserve strong praise. They represent a shift away from the idea that questions about ethics and morality are best left to humanists or to elder statesmen of science, a recognition that such matters ought to be an important part of education in the technical professions. One can hope that through these efforts a new generation of men and women will obtain a firm grounding in the ethical aspects of their vocations early enough to make a difference.
This volume offers to general and specialist readers alike the fullest and most complete survey of the development of science in the eighteenth century, exploring the implications of the ‘scientific revolution’ of the previous century and the major new growth-points, particularly in the experimental sciences. It is designed to be read as both a narrative and an interpretation, and also used as a work of reference. While prime attention is paid to western science, space is also given to science in traditional cultures and colonial science. The coverage strikes a balance between analysis of the cognitive dimension of science itself and interpretation of its wider social, economic and cultural significance. The contributors, world leaders in their respective specialities, engage with current historiographical and methodological controversies and strike out on positions of their own.
ABET's Engineering Criteria (EC) 2000 were widely heralded among engineering education reformers as a harbinger of change. And while historians in the Liberal Education Division reminded us that calls for better communication and consideration of social context were not new in engineering education, many dared to hope that things would be different this time. New engineering programs founded in this era promised a clean slate from which to create models of more balanced curricula. ABET's bean counting formulas had so obviously constrained creativity and stifled reform efforts; surely this shift would provide both flexibility and external incentive to engineering programs to make much needed changes. A decade later, with most programs having gone through two accreditation cycles under EC 2000, we have seen at best incremental change in the liberal education of students and diversification of the profession. In retrospect, adopting outcomes-based education (OBE) might have raised more red flags, as its problems have been well known to education scholars for some time. Drawing on social theories of education that take a critical view of OBE, this paper shows how ABET's implementation across engineering education reproduces and reinforces a certain social order in the profession and in society, one that continues to resist real change in educational structures, curriculum, and pedagogy. Within the power structures that exist in engineering education institutions, ABET's Student Outcomes (Criterion 3; commonly known as "a-k") sometimes can be used to justify broadening the curriculum when such efforts come under attack by self-appointed technical rigor police. However, just as often, it constrains what is possible in engineering classrooms through its drive for (certain kinds of) evidence of achievement of specified outcomes, regardless of process. ABET supports students' focus on credentialing to the exclusion of intellectual curiosity, undermining its stated outcome of lifelong learning. That diversity goes unmentioned in the defined Student Outcomes reinforces the invisibility of underrepresented groups and tacitly teaches students to devalue efforts to resist exclusionary or unjust practices in the profession. The paper will close with some discussion of alternatives to outcomes-based education that might better support change in engineering education.
Education's drive toward instrumentality is manifest in the no-child left behind regime of K-12 education in which "rigorous" curricula are measured by how efficiently and cost-effectively information is transferred. It is this context that informs the surge in popularity of "evidence based practice" across STEM education, with grave consequences for the field of engineering education research and for liberal education efforts in engineering. This paper first examines the history and epistemological roots of evidence based practice, beginning with the field of medicine, where randomized controlled field trials are the sine qua non of validity and rigor. What ways of knowing are included and excluded in evidence based practice? What counts as evidence? What questions are worth asking, and what questions are out of bounds in this regime? How have federal government definitions that guide evidence based research reproduced certain values and assumptions in our community as we apply standards of rigor in engineering education research? The paper then takes up the pedagogical implications of the evidence based model in which interventions are the sole purview of teachers, with presumed power to cause students to learn "better." The contradictions of using this approach despite "learner centered" rhetoric lead us to a closer examination of enacted and intended pedagogies in engineering education. A critical practice calls out the lack of reflexivity in evidence based practice; critical practice asks only what is effective in a classroom, not what is appropriate, or what should be learned. Those of us concerned about liberal education in engineering ought to be especially wary of evidenced based practice because it stands to narrow our research epistemologies, limit our pedagogies, and inhibit our critical practice.
Late in the summer of 1880, a wave of odors emanated from the sewers of Paris. As the stench lingered, outraged residents feared that the foul air would breed an epidemic. Fifteen years later-when the City of Light was in the grips of another Great Stink-the landscape of health and disease had changed dramatically. Parisians held their noses and protested, but this time few feared that the odors would spread disease. Historian David S. Barnes examines the birth of a new microbe-centered science of public health during the 1880s and 1890s, when the germ theory of disease burst into public consciousness. Tracing a series of developments in French science, medicine, politics, and culture, Barnes reveals how the science and practice of public health changed during the heyday of the Bacteriological Revolution. Despite its many innovations, however, the new science of germs did not entirely sweep away the older "sanitarian" view of public health. The longstanding conviction that disease could be traced to filthy people, places, and substances remained strong, even as it was translated into the language of bacteriology. Ultimately, the attitudes of physicians and the French public were shaped by political struggles between republicans and the clergy, by aggressive efforts to educate and "civilize" the peasantry, and by long-term shifts in the public's ability to tolerate the odor of bodily substances. This fascinating study sheds new light on the scientific and social factors that continue to influence the public's lingering uncertainty over how disease can-and cannot-be spread. © 2006 by The Johns Hopkins University Press. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction. Engineering education as an area of in-terest for curriculum development and pedagogical innovation emerged in the United States in the period around 1890 to 1910 with the founding of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education (SPEE) in 1893 (American Society for Engineering Education, n.d.). Founding dates for a few other engineering education associations may provide some indication of when interest in engineering education emerged across the world: Internationale Gesellschaft für Ingenieurpadagogik (IGIP, 1972); Société Européenne pour la Formation des Ingénieurs (SEFI, 1973); and Australasian Association of Engineering Education (AAEE, 1989). Other associations interested in engineering education include Associação Brasileira de Educação em Engenharia (ABENGE), Asociación Nacional de Facultades y Escuelas de Ingenieria (ANFEI), International Association for Continuing Engineering Education (IACEE), Korean Society for Engineering Education (KSEE), Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI), and Mühendislik Dekanlari Konseyi (MDK). Given the date of the founding of the SPEE and historical data available on the society and its growth, in relation to similar information about other engineering education associations or societies, the authors have elected to use the chronology of events in the United States as the principal framework to describe the evolution of engineering education as a field of scientific inquiry with references to similar events internationally.
Engineers need a breadth of experience to enrich the gene pool of ideas from which elegant engineering solutions can be drawn, called "individual diversity." While performing large ethnograph- ic research studies where hundreds of engineering students were interviewed, we interviewed Inez, a student that epitomizes indi- vidual diversity. Inez is unlike most engineers: she is female, multi-minority, and from a socio-economically disadvantaged background. Inez's story is told here using "ethnography of the particular," where the story of a single individual is explored. Inez has persevered through challenges posed by her lack of familiarity with the culture of engineering, her weak high school preparation, and her feelings of being an outsider in engineering. Inez's story demonstrates that the playing field in engineering is still not level, particularly for socio-economically disadvantaged students. Her story provides a poignant example of the impact of five of Conefrey's cultural myths of science.
Women student engineers' and professors' classroom experiences, especially their everyday interactions with men student engineers and professors, can be negative. This ethnographic study of the discourse used by professors and students during a sophomore design class demonstrates that some women's difficulties are the result of cultural features of engineering that are only rarely open to redefinition by women. In spite of many engineering educators' sincere commitments to improving women's experiences in engineering education, these cultural features diminish the successes of reform-minded engineering education. I detail how discourse in whole-class and teamwork settings indicated the cultural norms of engineering talk and how this discourse reinforced traditional practices that were only rarely open to revision. Also, I comment on the use of ordeals in this classroom. My findings suggest that engineering education must change before inclusion of women is realized. In particular, I suggest the changes needed are complex and include 1) more communication about the ways that cultural norms impact women and other marginalized groups, 2) forums where participants can speak openly without fear of retaliation, and 3) attention to changing those policies and practices that send narrow messages about who engineers are and what engineering might be.
Engineers have two types of stories about what constitutes 'real' engineering. In sociological terms, one is technicist, the other heterogeneous. How and where boundaries are drawn between 'the technical' and 'the social' in engineering identities and practices is a central concern for feminist technology studies, given the strong marking of sociality as feminine and technology as masculine. I explore these themes, drawing on ethnographic observations of building design engineering. This is a profoundly heterogeneous and networked engineering practice, which entails troubled boundary drawing and identities for the individuals involved - evident in interactions between engineers and architects, and among engineers, especially around management and design. Many engineers cleave to a technicist engineering identity, and even those who embrace the heterogeneous reality of their actual work oscillate between or straddle, not always comfortably, the two identities. There are complex gender tensions, as well as professional tensions, at work here - associated with distinct versions of hegemonic masculinity, with the technical/social dualism, and with what I call 'gender in/authenticity' issues. I conclude that technicist engineering identities persist in part because they converge with (and perform) available masculinities, and that women's (perceived and felt) membership as 'real' engineers is likely to be more fragile than men's. Engineering as a profession must foreground and celebrate the heterogeneity of engineering work. Improving the representation of women in engineering requires promoting more heterogeneous versions of gender as well as engineering.
In this article for scholars in engineering studies, I draw on the work of Antonio Gramsci to highlight scaling up as a scholarly practice and make a case that engineering studies highlight attention to what I call scalable scholarship. Scale is the moving boundary between ideas and realities, meaning and reference, the ideal and the real. Highlighting scaling up involves inquiring into what is taking place when scholars not only conduct research on engineers and engineering but also design and teach courses for engineering students, serve on official panels and advisory committees, offer presentations to engineering audiences, and help build a new discipline focused on engineering education. An invitation to deliver a keynote address to the World Congress of Chemical Engineering became a challenge to venture beyond research for STS audiences and pedagogical supplements in the curricular margins to begin contesting the dominant epistemological contents of engineering practices by integrating practices of critical self-analysis in the core of engineering curricula. In undertaking the ‘Glasgow project’, I came to recognize how research practices open and close pathways for critical participation. I also learned the importance of listening to ongoing struggles, following complexity with dense simplicity, engaging diverse audiences, and accepting the necessity and implications of localizing practices. Scalable scholarship avoids the comforts of resolute pessimism, but it risks the dangers of co-optation.
Engineering education research has experienced a notable scale-up in recent years through the development of departments and degree programs, high-profile publication outlets, research agen-das, and meetings. We begin by reviewing these developments, contextualizing them historically, and clarifying some relevant terminology. We then use observational data collected at the 2007 inaugural International Conference on Research in Engineering Education (ICREE) to examine how engineering education is variously conceptualized as a discipline, community of practice, and/or field. We also examine how ICREE participants engaged with questions about the infrastructure and major goals of engi-neering education research. Our data reveals both an overall lack of clarity and continued sense of ambiguity about the identity and status of engineering education research. We conclude by recom-mending that participants and stakeholders work to clarify the goals and objectives of engineering education research, especially to inform the continued development of the field's identity and supporting infrastructures.
With recent calls for expanding the scope and rigor of engineer-ing education research, use of qualitative methods to answer research questions that can not be answered through quantitative methods is taking on increasing significance. Well-designed qualitative studies often build on epistemological consistency across theoretical perspectives, research questions, and research methods. We examine recent articles published in the Journal of Engineering Education to determine the overall prevalence of qualitative articles and the extent to which they appear epistemo-logically and methodologically consistent with the goals of quali-tative inquiry. We find that there are very few qualitative articles published, and even fewer which show epistemological consisten-cy across different aspects of the research design. These issues may limit the rich, descriptive information that could be gained from qualitative inquiry, limiting the contributions qualitative studies could make to engineering education. We call on researchers to expand their use of qualitative methods and to design their studies with careful attention to epistemological con-sistency across the design.
When Annette Baier asked a few years ago what women wanted in a moral theory, the answer she arrived at was that moral theory was just what women didn’t want, if a moral theory is a “fairly systematic account of a fairly large area of morality, with a keystone supporting all the rest” (Baier 1985, 55). Yet the latter is what a still dominant tradition of moral philosophy-stretching from Socrates through Sidgwick to Rawls-does want: a fairly compact system of very general but directly action-guiding principles or procedures. Current philosophical practice still largely views ethics as the search for moral knowledge, and moral knowledge as comprising universal moral formulae and the theoretical justification of these.
The reasons for the loss of high ability women from science, mathematics, and engineering undergraduate majors are not well understood. However, investigators have, consistently, found an early loss of confidence in their ability to “do science” among such women. In seeking to explain why the vulnerability of women to leaving science majors greatly exceeds that of men, the author draws upon the findings of a 3-year, ethnographic study of factors contributing to high undergraduate attrition rates among men and women of different ethnicities on seven campuses of different type. The explanatory focus is upon the consequences of a misfit between the learned expectations of women entering college mathematics and science classes, and those of faculty and male peers, about the purpose and nature of the undergraduate experience in these majors. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Abstract In this essay, Gert Biesta provides a critical analysis of the idea of evidence-based practice and the ways in which it has been promoted and implemented in the field of education, focusing on the tension between scientific and democratic control over educational practice and research. Biesta examines three key assumptions of evidence-based education: first, the extent to which educational practice can be compared to the practice of medicine, the field in which evidence-based practice was first developed; second, the role of knowledge in professional actions, with special attention to what kind of epistemology is appropriate for professional practices that wish to be informed by the outcomes of research; and third, the expectations about the practical role of research implicit in the idea of evidence-based education. Biesta concludes that evidence-based practice provides a framework for understanding the role of research in educational practice that not only restricts the scope of decision making to questions about effectivity and effectiveness, but that also restricts the opportunities for participation in educational decision making. He argues that we must expand our views about the interrelations among research, policy, and practice to keep in view education as a thoroughly moral and political practice that requires continuous democratic contestation and deliberation.
We recount some of the most significant and colorful findings of our four-year study of gender issues in the undergraduate computer science program at Carnegie Mellon. We also discuss the subsequent dramatic increase in the number of women in the program. We conclude with recommendations for the most generally useful and effective actions departments can take to attract and retain female students.
1st publ Bibliogr. na s. 160-182
As a result of migration and globalization, the requirement for anthropometrical data of distinct races and gender has augmented whilst the availability remained minimal. Therefore, several sets of estimation equations, which depend on gender, race, body height (BH), and body mass (BM), were established in this study to fulfill this necessity. The method consisted of: (a) an inexpensive device to scan the body surface, (b) the electronic reconstruction of the body surface and (c) a module to calculate segmental lengths, segmental masses, radii of gyration and moments of inertia, using the 16-segment model (Zatsiorsky, 1983) and density data of Dempster (Space requirements of the seated operator, WADC Technical Report, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, 1995, pp. 55-159), and (d) the establishment of regression equations. One hundred young Chinese and Germans, representing the Asian and Caucasian races, were randomly recruited to participate in this study. The results revealed contrasting trunk, limb lengths and relative skull volume (skull volume/body volume) between the two races as well as the independence of head mass from body height. The regression equations, which were successfully derived based on the above-unveiled differences, are capable of supplying a prompt way to obtain all anthropometrical parameters of different genders and race groups through individual BM and BH. Anthropometrical data are related to gender, race, BH and BM. In order to obtain the data, one can utilize various measurements, which might have enormous financial expenditure in addition to time-consumption or employ the convenient and economical short-cut-regression-to obtain such data. The results of this study reveal that the accuracy of such estimations is high. The errors of predictions lie under 0.7 Standard deviation, which will satisfy most of applications.
A change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras--adoption of "blind" auditions with a "screen" to conceal the candidate's identity from the jury--provides a test for sex-biased hiring. Using data from actual auditions, in an individual fixed-effects framework, we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired. Although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction, the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras.
No Man’s Land: An Interview with Mary Daly” In What is Enlightenment 16 <http://www.scouserquinn.com/?p=2779http://www.scouserquinn.com/?p=2779> Online Magazine
- Susan Bridle