Conference PaperPDF Available

Moving from crime and punishment to success and reward: transitioning from technical to educational research

Authors:

Abstract

Many engineering academics interested in quality teaching and learning dabble with educational research. Some go further leaving their technical research field behind to embark head-long into what for many is an initially bewildering and conceptually challenging domain. Often peers perceive this transition as a crime (giving up on real engineering) liable to be punished with reduced access to funding and institutional recognition for one’s research. The Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) has been sponsoring a Winter School in Engineering Education Research Methods since 2011, to help engineering academics change their transition story from one of crime and punishment to success and reward. While helpful, this transition is not a simple matter of learning new techniques but of altering one’s perspective and habits of thinking and behaviour. Many participants find this both challenging and at least initially, a lonely pursuit. In this paper, participants in the 2018 school ask the question “what enables and hinders the transition to educational research”.
1
Moving from crime and punishment to success and
reward: transitioning from technical to educational
research
Author 1 (add authors only after the review process)
Institution, City, Country
Email address
Author 2 (add authors only after the review process)
Institution, City, Country
Email address
Abstract: Many engineering academics interested in quality teaching and
learning dabble with educational research. Some go further leaving their
technical research field behind to embark head-long into what for many is an
initially bewildering and conceptually challenging domain. Often peers perceive
this transition as a crime (giving up on real engineering) liable to be punished
with reduced access to funding and institutional recognition for one’s research.
The Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) has been
sponsoring a Winter School in Engineering Education Research Methods since
2011, to help engineering academics change their transition story from one of
crime and punishment to success and reward. While helpful, this transition is not
a simple matter of learning new techniques but of altering one’s perspective and
habits of thinking and behaviour. Many participants find this challenging. In this
paper, participants in the 2018 school ask the question “what enables and
hinders the transition to educational research”.
Introduction
Engineering education remains an emerging field of research within the Australian context
(Gardner & Willey, 2018) as well as in other parts of the world (Alias & Williams, 2011; van
Hattum-Janssen, Williams, & De Oliverira, 2015). Few formal programs exist for training
engineering education researchers, especially outside of the United States, which results in
academics often completing their tertiary studies in technical engineering disciplines before
later transitioning into engineering education research (Borrego & Bernhard, 2011). Many
papers have been written about this transition, however these have tended to focus on the
associated challenges in order to identify the knowledge and practices that need to be acquired
(Borrego, 2007; Streveler, Borrego, & Smith, 2007). Of particular interest has been
understanding the paradigm shift required to engage in quality engineering education research
which is transferable across contexts and answers the deeper “why” questions for learning in
engineering (Douglas, Koro-Ljungberg, & Borrego, 2010; Streveler et al., 2007).
The Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) has been sponsoring an
annual Winter School in Engineering Education Research Methods since 2011 in response to
an identified need to both assist the transition of current and new researchers into engineering
education research and to improve the quality of this research. This is a five day program
facilitated by researchers experienced in engineering education. The program’s objectives are
to:
improve practice through workshops with experts identified by the participants and
AAEE,
share research methodologies and data analysis techniques,
provide an opportunity for peer review of work, and the development of academic
writing skills,
2
build community and a reference group for students and academics whose
interests are often unique in their home departments, and
develop career paths for these participants through clearer articulation of skills and
interaction with visiting industry and academic experts.
Each year the facilitators aim to meet what participants perceive to be their needs and although
some years an emphasis on topics such as course evaluation or writing have been proposed,
there has been persistent demand from participants to learn more about research. As a result,
it has been found useful to spend the initial sessions of the school on the epistemology and
methodology of qualitative research so that participants can gain a better understanding of
why certain data-gathering methods might be used, as well as how best to use them. In 2018,
the school spent the first two days on epistemology and methodology, the third day on methods
per se, the fourth day on data analysis and the fifth day on writing. As well as the standard
qualitative methods such as interviews, the methods part of the School introduces some less
familiar approaches such as transect walks, sentence frames and systematic observation. As
research methods are developed through experience involving collaboration, application,
feedback and reflection, it is hard to achieve more than introducing participants to the skills in
the short time frame available. To address this, participants are offered the opportunity to take
part in subsequent online discussion of topics of their choice. In 2017 the post-Winter School
discussions focussed on observational methods and resulted in a journal paper being
published (Matemba, Parker, & Jolly, 2018) in the AAEE journal. In 2018 these discussions
have focused on applying participant’s learning from Winter School to a collaborative research
project exploring their transition to becoming engineering education researchers.
In this paper the transition experience of five participants of the 2018 AAEE Winter School is
examined through the lens of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice (Bourdieu & Nice, 1977). This
theory incorporates three concepts field, habitus and capital offering insights into how
individuals interact and behave (habitus) within their environment and social structures (field),
based on the recognised currency (capital). Here the field is considered to be
departments/faculties of engineering in Australian universities, which engineering education
represents a part thereof. The aim of this paper is to explore the habitus and capital factors
which enable or inhibit the success of engineering education researchers within the field.
Background
Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice provides a useful perspective to investigate the transition of
technical researchers into educational research as this theory allows insights and
understanding of educational questions that are not readily visible with other approaches
(Grenfell & James, 1998, p. 2). In the transition from technical to educational research, we
seek to explore why transitioning researchers behave in particular ways within a given cultural
context and how that can be understood using Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice. This theory has
three elements field, capital and habitus through which to view and investigate this transition.
The field can be best understood as a “configuration of relations between positions objectively
defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon the occupants, agents
or institutions” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 72-73). A field is interpreted by Webb,
Schirato, and Danaher (2002, pp. 21-22) as:
A series of institutions, rules, rituals, conventions, categories, designations,
appointments and titles which constitute an objective hierarchy, and which produce
and authorise certain discourses and activities. (Webb et al., 2002, pp. 21-22)
There are different kinds of capital present in any field, and participants compete for and with
the capital to improve their position in the field. In engineering education research, the capital
available is similar to the wider engineering research field and to the broader field of higher
education. Hence, to understand their transition it is important to understand the different forms
3
of capital available and the sources of that capital (Jolly, 2016). It is in the competition for and
distribution of the various forms of capital that the configuration of relations that make up a
field becomes observable.
The medium of…relations [in a field] …is capital, which is hence both product and
process within a field. All capital economic, social and cultural is symbolic, and
the prevailing configurations of it shape social practice (Grenfell & James, 2004, p.
510).
Bourdieu refers to the habitus as the subjectively generated rules, values and dispositions
commonly held by members of a field. Mutch (2006) refers to habitus as “knowing what,
knowing who and knowing how” (Mutch, 2006, p. 167). Hence habitus can be understood as
the attitudes, beliefs and practices gained from our history that:
generally stay with us across contexts (they are durable and transposable). These
values and dispositions allow us to respond to cultural rules and contexts in a variety
of ways (because they allow for improvisations), but the responses are always largely
determined - regulated by where (and who) we have been in a culture. (Webb et al.,
2002, p. 44).
There have been several previous instances of using Bourdieu’s theory in engineering
education research. In particular, Jolly (2016) applied Bourdieu’s theory to pedagogical content
knowledge in engineering education, while Kloot (2011) applied it to understanding
engineering education foundation programs in South Africa.
Methodology
Academics who are not only interested but have already initiated their move towards the
engineering education research are arguably in the best position to tell the story of transition.
The AAEE Winter School participants were earnestly trying to step into the field of engineering
education research, so willingly participated in the five-day program. All participants in the
Winter School were invited to join a collaborative research project at the conclusion of the
program.
Five participants from the 2018 cohort took part in this research. All five participants were from
different institutions, academic rankings (ranging from PhD candidate, associate lecturer,
lecturer, senior lecturer and reader (associate professor)) and geographic locations within
Australia. After the Winter School, the participants and two Winter School facilitators
collaborated on the project through regular meetings using the online video conferencing tool
Zoom.
The five participants interviewed each other about their experience of moving into engineering
education research and the associated challenges. The interviews were semi-structured and
were guided by the interview protocol that was developed collaboratively by the participants.
Consent was obtained from all participants in accordance with the ethical clearance.
The interview questions were designed to solicit information on capital within the field of
engineering faculties in Australian universities. We were particularly interested in identifying
the range of capital and the relative importance of each in enabling or inhibiting participation
in engineering education research. We also investigated the habitus of the participants, and
how this impacted the acquisition of capital as well as participation in the sub-field of
engineering education research. The semi-structured interview protocol was divided into two
parts. The first part focused on exploring the individual’s understanding of engineering
education research, whereas the second part focused on their transition experiences so far
and their future aspirations.
A Bourdieuvian analysis was applied to the data to uncover how these transitioning academics
experienced the rules of the field and the pursuit of advantageous capital. We also analysed
the impact of the habitus (or patterns of behaviour) they brought with them, and how this may
4
be influenced to ease the transition to educational research and maximise effectiveness once
there.
Results & Discussion
The participants in this study were prepared for professional engineering practice through their
undergraduate degree in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
disciplines. Some had pursued work as practising engineers before returning to a university
position, others had moved directly into work in the university sector. For our participants,
personal interest in teaching was a primary motivator for participating in the higher education
field in engineering:
My intention when I came to Australia to do the PhD was to go back to India
and do teaching …I got this teaching intensive position, and I was really
happy because that was what I wanted to do.
In contrast to other members of the field, our participants did not regard teaching as an
interruption to a research career, but as the primary and intrinsically motivating core of their
work. They had been actively engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning before
becoming aware of, and deciding to pursue, rigorous engineering education research.
Participants expressed dissatisfaction with pursuing research in technical engineering
research, being motivated to join the subfield of engineering education research by an appetite
to experience the impact of their research and scholarship directly through their teaching:
I enjoyed the teaching and educational side of things much more than the
PhD I was doing. I had a very fun time there so. I also thought I was much
better at teaching and educational side of stuff and the impact I think I can
have in education is lot bigger than anything I could have got out of
continuing research into the traditional mechanical engineering. So I think
that is the main reasons that made me kind of jump.
I really dont want to go back to technical research because I was enjoying
the teaching, and if I was doing technical research, that time I could devote
to doing education research, because that can help my teaching.
They felt that the legitimacy of the engineering education research subfield is not widely
acknowledged by other Engineering field participants. They expressed a view that many in the
field see education research as a pursuit belonging to education faculties (hence not
engineering research) or as being undertaken by discrete pockets throughout the engineering
academy (hence, being niche, having less impact and importance). It was also expressed that
the legitimacy of the education research endeavour has been undermined as academic roles
in Learning and Teaching units are being replaced by professional staff, such as learning
designers or teaching fellows. Given these roles are associated with reduced or no mandate
to pursue research, it signals that the university does not consider teaching and learning a
research pursuit.
Capital
As subfields of higher education, the capital associated with engineering education research
is similar to the capital of typical technical engineering research. This includes publications in
journals with a high impact factor, high citation counts, and increasingly grant income.
Members of the field who accumulate this capital have a dominant position in the field of higher
education, and conversely those without such capital do not. Journal impact factors vary
across disciplines. For example, the impact factor for a selection of IEEE journals is listed in
Table 1. The journals specific to a technical area have impact factors much higher than the
IEEE Transactions on Education which has an impact factor of 1.6. Indeed, the highest ranked
journal in engineering education research, the Journal of Engineering Education, has an
impact factor of 1.976. However, education researchers in engineering departments are likely
5
to be judged against their technical researcher peers. This practice contributes to the perceived
lower status of engineering education research:
[The] faculty includes a lot of academics and most of them are involved in technical
research so [engineering education research is] not really viewed highly by academics
and also researchers that I speak to on a day to day basis [and] other PhD students.
This explains why another participant talked of the pressure to “pump out” technical research,
taking time away from their educational research. As journal impact factors are linked to the
potential readership of journal papers, the lower impact factors reflect a smaller research
community. Engineering education is also a different research area in that often the research
is focused on improving developmental and educational outcomes as opposed to stimulating
other research. Hence, journal readers are not necessarily researchers but, for example,
educationalists, practitioners and academic developers focused on improving educational
outcomes. This is different to most technical engineering research areas where the end-users
are typically other researchers who build on research and subsequently cite each other’s
papers.
Table 1: Selection of IEEE journal impact factors
Journal name
Journal Impact Factor
IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine
10.429
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
9.455
IEEE Communications Magazine
9.270
IEEE Wireless Communications
9.202
IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
8.803
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
7.451
IEEE Transactions on Education
1.600
In addition, the absence of a specific engineering education Field of Research (FOR) code
contributes to reduced capital in the subfield of engineering education research within Australia
and New Zealand. The Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification
(ANZSRC) have FOR classifications that allows research and development (R&D) activity to
be categorised according to the field of research. The categories in the classification include
major fields and related sub-fields of research and emerging areas of study investigated by
businesses, universities, tertiary institutions, national research institutions and other
organisations. The FOR codes are a hierarchical classification with three levels, specifically,
Divisions (2 digits, for example engineering is 09), Groups (4 digits, for example civil
engineering is 0905) and Fields (6 digits, for example construction engineering is 090502).
Each Division is based on a broad discipline. Groups within each Division are those that share
the same broad methodology, techniques and/or perspective as others in the Division. The
ANZSRC states that the FOR codes consider the methodology used in the research area.
Hence Groups and Fields of research are categorised to the Divisions sharing the same
methodology rather than the Division they support. Currently there is no 09 engineering code
for engineering education. This means many researchers have to categorise their research
under a 13 Education code or 099999 Engineering not elsewhere classified. This has a
tendency to reduce the visibility and value of engineering education research to the
engineering field as it either does not contribute to the 09 engineering FOR or to the
unclassified 099999 code and is thus perceived as peripheral to the discipline.
6
For many researchers across the whole higher education sector the viability of their project
depends on whether it has attracted funding. Similarly, for our participants this means that
when the money runs out the project often stops:
[The] money ran out and the college didn't want to keep supporting the … education
space.... So after a few months of that I decided to leave.
However, participants felt that technical engineering researchers have access to more sources
of funds than researchers in engineering education:
Even tapping into the university funding I have found quite hard to argue for
funding… I'm sure there would be some kind of pockets that could be tapped into but
I'm unaware of these.
One participant knew of funding available through their Deputy Dean to support teaching and
learning projects but in specific topic areas such as student success and retention. These
funds available through internal Faculty sources are typically small amounts focussed on
evaluating teaching and learning practices or creating new teaching and learning resources
rather than supporting educational research. This contributes to the perspective that education
is something we are all involved in and fails to recognise the need to include the evidence
informed approaches of engineering education research in these activities.
While many of our American colleagues have successively accessed National Science
Foundation (NSF) funding for engineering education research, in Australia successful access
to the Australian Research Council (ARC) grants for engineering education research is
generally viewed as being problematic and/or extremely difficult. There is a perception that
without an engineering FOR code, an engineering education grant will find it hard to compete
against broader educational research grants. Firstly, educational grants are often assessed
by members of education faculties (who have their own habitus, expectations and perceptions
of what they value as capital) not engineering education researchers. Secondly because
project quality and innovation, assessed using the following criteria, represents 40% of the
overall discovery grant selection criteria there is perception that applications focusing on
engineering education will find it hard to compete with education applications with broader
outcomes:
1. the extent to which the research addresses a significant problem;
2. evidence that the conceptual/theoretical framework is innovative and original;
3. potential for the research to contribute to the Australian Government’s Science and
Research Priorities;
4. the extent to which the research project includes aims, concepts, methods and results
which will advance knowledge; and
5. the extent to which the research has the potential to enhance international
collaboration.
We suspect it is probably a combination of the current habitus of engineering education
researchers (being influenced by how the field and we view our research) combined with the
often-unacknowledged need to improve the quality and impact of our research that contributes
to this perception. In any case, the perception feeds the belief of there being reduced access
to the existing capital for engineering education researchers.
With little access to the forms of capital mentioned above, intrinsic motivation was found to be
the primary driver for pursuing engineering education research for the participants in our study
as mentioned earlier. They pursue this research as it aligns with their personal interests and
values:
First of all it helps with my teaching, gives me a lot of data about my teaching.
Anything that involves working with humans and trying to develop a better experience
for humans is what I perceive engineering as and engineering education. That is what
I am really interested in and that won't change for me.
7
I always have found that sort of thinking about learning processes and how people
learn really interesting and stimulating, what it means to learn, what knowledge means.
Personal motivations and values played a significant role in participants’ decisions to persist
with engineering education research. These included an interest in understanding how people
learn and how this could be improved, feeling a sense of wanting to help people, wanting to
improve classroom teaching and learning experiences, and a desire to enhance how engineers
operate in industry with respect to social and environmental considerations. These motivations
align with those identified by Alias and Williams (2011) and Borrego and Bernhard (2011).
It's [education research] been always the interesting part of my job - reading the
literature and then the question for me is whether doing the research is part of what I
want to do or just to have time to engage in reading in what other people write in the
literature and putting it into practice.
I really enjoy being in this space, I think that I can do a lot of things to help people again
in this area more so than in their technical research that I was doing.
However, one participant believes that undertaking educational research will improve his
teaching which will be rewarded at his institution:
I’ll be doing more informed activities and so be doing the right things… and that will
improve my teaching which will help me with my career as well as helping students
Habitus
Like most academics in engineering education research, the participants in our study
completed technical undergraduate engineering degrees. With the exception of one
participant, each had also completed their doctoral studies in a technical engineering topic and
then took up engineering education research at a later stage of their career. Completing
undergraduate and postgraduate studies in technical engineering disciplines usually presents
a hurdle to be overcome for conducting engineering education research, as this experience
typically prepares participants for a technical academic career. Most technical research does
not provide an introduction to the qualitative methods, theories and approaches used in
engineering education research. Hence this required participants to develop new habitus
appropriate to the engineering education research sub-field as part of their transition. This was
emphasised by participants when discussing their gaps in understanding engineering
education research with statements such as:
I think I had a fairly clear view [of what engineering education research was] fairly early
on in the process and it was just trying to develop the skills myself is something that I
have not devoted much time to until now.
I have only a little information about [education theory]. I did not use anything so far.
The project I’m involved in is not at a stage to use any theory.
I kind of stumbled across engineering education by mistake but … incorporated those
different perceptions of reality and took them into consideration.
In line with the findings of Borrego (2007), participants described their technical research in
terms of well-accepted theories and methods for collecting evidence. In contrast, participants
described engineering education research as requiring measurement of things much harder to
quantify. This distinction is an example of technical engineering studies not preparing
academics for tackling educational problems where different methods need to be employed.
Consequently, participants expressed that transferring from an established habitus to a
different sub-field posed challenges:
My technical research was very much mathematical analysis, very much things that
you could prove to make the world simpler or the problem simple enough - assume
enough things so that you can then mathematically analyse everything and prove
something and come up with a theorem.
8
[In my technical research] we could quantify the errors in it and say this assumption
was made so obviously it would have impacts on the results. I feel like [engineering
education research] is more difficult to quantify that kind of error.
The evidence was really looking at … an experiment that was already done physically
in practice, and then comparing that to the model [I was developing]. And then
obviously if it was similar then the model was validated.
In order to address the gaps, participants recognised the importance of socialising with peers
to develop their expertise in engineering education research, and to increase their sense of
belonging in the sub-field. Participants have shown to be proactive in seeking out
developmental opportunities, both formal and informal, as well as generating their own
opportunities such as forming a community of practice and identifying mentors that enable this
sharing. Quotes from participants which support this include:
I would say that our winter school group is [one of] the most sustained group I've
communicated with beyond my school
[I’ve got] a main person that I go to for anything specific about engineering education
research.
So, because I don’t have any research allocation in my role, I started doing a little bit
of research in my own time last year. I started a small group with the physics people,
like a physics education research group.
However, a lack of collaborators and community participating in the engineering education
research sub-field, particularly at the local level, was identified as an inhibiting factor.
Participants frequently discussed the lack of academics interested in engineering education
research within their home institutions. For example:
Sometimes I just go and knock on my supervisor’s door just to have a different type of
talk and let out some of my frustration and to speak to someone that is interested in
engineering education.
[There is] no one that I can talk with [about engineering education research]…not
sure I can continue like I said there is no team.
T&L [Teaching and learning] seminars for staff are not run often there used to be a
forum for engineering education every 2 weeks until the lead person left the School
and the forum collapsed.
Given the difficulties previously discussed in transitioning to engineering education research,
we ask what we should do as a subfield to strengthen our identity and assist those who wish
to make the transition. The winter school experience has demonstrated the need to provide a
sense of community and identity for these transitioning researchers. The fact that the
participants have maintained weekly Zoom meetings for the last seven months demonstrates
how much they value these discussions and the research practice involved in producing this
paper. For most participants if not for these meetings they would be the sole member or at
best a part of a very small group of engineering education researchers within their home
institutions. This suggests that as engineering educational researchers we need to form cross
institution research groups and collaborations. For example, the two winter school facilitators
contributing to this paper are currently endeavouring to develop a collaborative engineering
education research group between their two universities. This will increase the profile of
engineering education research as the capital of research students, research supervision
opportunities, publications, impact, grants et cetera will be contributed to by academics at both
institutions. Hence, the volume and impact of these measurable forms of capital will be larger
than either institution could achieve on their own. It also provides prospective transitioning
engineering education researchers access to a wider pool of expertise and experience to
collaborate with, be socialised into the subfield of engineering education research (change
their habitus) and more opportunity to access the available capital.
9
Beyond this, like any emerging research domain, it is up to the established researchers to
change the narrative around, and current perceptions of, engineering education research
through improving the quality and impact of their research and increasing their access to the
available capital. This would have a positive impact on engineering education research’s
recognition in the field (engineering) and the habitus and belief to access the field’s capital for
those transitioning to and participating in engineering education research.
Conclusions
In this paper, we explored the experience of five participants of the 2018 AAEE Winter School
transitioning into engineering education research using Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice. Each of
our participants entered the field of higher education through an undergraduate degree in a
technical STEM discipline, before being drawn to engineering education research later in their
career. Each participant identified perceived constraints in accessing capital within the field
caused by the transition. This included a lack of access to grant funding, a reduction in the
perceived significance of research due to structural influences like impact factors and field of
research codes, and more limited career progression opportunities. Strong intrinsic motivation
to pursue educational research, which formed part of participants habitus, was found to
contribute significantly to their decision to pursue engineering education research in spite of
the reduced access to capital. Here participants expressed motivations around understanding
how people learn, wanting to help others, improving educational experiences, and enhancing
how engineers operate in society. The formation of the cross-institutional community of
practice which emerged out of the 2018 AAEE Winter School was identified as a key strategy
in overcoming the small number of engineering education researchers within individual
institutions, which enabled socialisation of engineering education research concepts and
experiences in the field. Improving the transition experience of engineering education
researchers in developing new habitus and effectively leveraging capital will enhance the
uptake and reputation of engineering education research. However, this needs to be
accompanied by current researchers recognising and responding to the need to improve the
quality and impact of engineering education research and advocating for changes to structural
factors such as the allocation of an engineering education FOR code. These changes will
have a positive influence on the habitus and enable greater access to capital for current and
future participants in the sub-field.
References
Alias, M., & Williams, B. (2011). Strategic Pathways to Engineering Education Research:
case study of a top-down initiative. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the
Research in Engineering Education Symposium (REES 2011).
Borrego, M. (2007). Conceptual difficulties experienced by trained engineers learning
educational research methods. Journal of Engineering Education, 96(2), 91-102.
Borrego, M., & Bernhard, J. (2011). The emergence of engineering education research as an
internationally connected field of inquiry. Journal of Engineering Education, 100(1),
14-47.
Bourdieu, P., & Nice, R. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice (Vol. 16). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Douglas, E. P., Koro-Ljungberg, M., & Borrego, M. (2010). Challenges and promises of
overcoming epistemological and methodological partiality: Advancing engineering
education through acceptance of diverse ways of knowing. European Journal of
Engineering Education, 35(3), 247-257. doi:10.1080/03043791003703177
10
Gardner, A., & Willey, K. (2018). Academic identity reconstruction: the transition of
engineering academics to engineering education researchers. Studies in higher
education, 43(2), 234-250. doi:10.1080/03075079.2016.1162779
Grenfell, M., James, D. (1998). Bourdieu and Education. London: Routledge,
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203209455
Grenfell,M. ,& James,D. (2004) Change in the fieldchanging the field: Bourdieu and the
methodological practice of educational research, British Journal of Sociology of
Education, 25:4, 507-523, doi: 10.1080/014256904200026989
Jolly, H. (2016). Understanding pedagogical content knowledge for engineering education:
the effect of field and habitus. (Doctoral Thesis), University of Southern Queensland,
Toowoomba, Australia.
Kloot, B. (2011). A Bourdieuian analysis of foundation programmes within the field of
engineering education: Two South African case studies. (Doctoral Thesis), University
of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Matemba, E., Parker, L., & Jolly, L. (2018). Diversifying methods in educational research:
what we learned at Winter School. Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, 1-
10. doi:10.1080/22054952.2018.1503779
Mutch, C. (2006). Adapting Bourdieu’s field theory to explain decision-making processes in
educational policy. Theoretical frameworks in qualitative research, 1, 155-174.
Streveler, R. A., Borrego, M., & Smith, K. A. (2007). Moving From the Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning to Educational Research: An Example From Engineering. To
improve the academy, 25(1), 139-149.
van Hattum-Janssen, N., Williams, B., & De Oliverira, J. M. N. (2015). Engineering Education
Research in Portugal, an Emerging Field. International Journal of Engineering
Education, 31(2), 674-684.
Webb, J., Schirato, T., & Danaher, G. (2002). Understanding bourdieu. London: Sage.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the Australasian Association for Engineering
Education for supporting the annual Winter School.
Copyright statement
Copyright © 2019 Authors’ names: The authors assign to the REES organisers and educational non-profit institutions a non-
exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and
this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to REES to publish this document in full
on the internet (prime sites and mirrors), on portable media and in printed form within the REES 2019 conference proceedings.
Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the authors.
... Many engineering education researchers begin their career doing technical research, then commence educational research later on. Engineering education researchers are likely to have trained in other fields of research (such as applied engineering) before commencing engineering education research at a later point during their careers [5], [6]. Studies have highlighted the phenomenon of Australian engineering academics adjusting their research work to commence engineering education research [6]- [10]. ...
... Engineering education researchers are likely to have trained in other fields of research (such as applied engineering) before commencing engineering education research at a later point during their careers [5], [6]. Studies have highlighted the phenomenon of Australian engineering academics adjusting their research work to commence engineering education research [6]- [10]. From a statistical viewpoint, Australian engineering academics who commence education research at some point in their career tend to do so 7 years on average after starting their research careers [11]. ...
... Conducting EER in Australia can be challenging as teaching-related research is often considered by academic colleagues (and universities) to be less legitimate than technical research [6], [10], which can be a problem for academics when it comes to performance reviews. Often researchers 'felt that they had to maintain some technical research even when they found it "boring"' [10]. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Currently there is limited understanding about the academic qualifications (or formal research training) which engineering education researchers possess, and which university departments they primarily reside in. The objective of this study is to capture information on these researcher characteristics via bibliographic analysis of publicly available sources. A list of 104 authors affiliated with Australian institutions who published in at least one of thirteen engineering education journals between 2018-2019 (inclusive) was retrieved. For each author, information about their qualifications and where they worked was compiled from available biographic information in their publications (e.g. often common in IEEE publications), ORCID profile, Scopus profile, the Australian TROVE database, and online university researcher profile. In total, 80 authors held a known PhD; 30 in technical engineering, 12 in engineering education, 3 in education, 21 in other disciplines, and 14 not specified. Of the 67 with known bachelor degrees, 69% were in engineering, the remainder widely varied. 92 authors worked in a university; 56 in engineering faculty, 9 in computing faculty, 13 in other faculty, 9 in teaching and learning departments, 4 in other capacities at a university. 4 authors did not work at a university. Our findings show that while a minority of engineering education researchers hold technical engineering PhD degrees, PhD theses on engineering education topics are becoming more widespread and we can predict a growing community of Australian engineering researchers. These data can assist with planning strategies for further increasing engagement with engineering education research in the Australian context.
... For early career researchers (ECRs), which include those who intend to develop skills in a new area of research such as engineering education research (EER), there is an immediate need for support, training, and professional development opportunities (Dart et al., 2021). Since EER is relatively new to many Australasian institutions (and other parts of the globe to a varied extent; Dart et al., 2021), support and training opportunities would help ECRs familiarise themselves with new expectations and ways of conducting research (Dart et al., 2019). The field of EER is concerned with better understanding and improving the process of knowledge formation in engineering. ...
... There exists a body of recent research on the benefits of professional development training (Kim et al., 2021;Hammack et al., 2020;Lamanauskas et al., 2020;Mesutoglu & Baran, 2021), summer/winter schools (Bacharova et al., 2014;Dart et al., 2019;Dart et al., 2021;De la Fuente et al., 2020;Matemba et al., 2018), and conferences/workshops (Borrego & Bernhard, 2011;Johar et al., 2021;Tiwari et al., 2020;Tormey et al., 2020), on boosting the development rate of skills over a short, intense period. However, there is insufficient evidence on the broader outcomes of such training exercises (Collins et al, 2022) to judge and distinguish the most efficient type of program for a particular end goal (Kim et al., 2021). ...
... By immersing themselves in the content and discussions, the authors were able to enhance their knowledge and consolidate fragmented concepts, providing more definition to the start of their journey into EER (Dart et al., 2019): ...
Conference Paper
https://aaee.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Early-Career-Academics-Transition-into-Engineering-Education-.pdf
... However, researchers face numerous barriers to engaging in engineering education research (EER). This is in part caused by most engineering education researchers having technical engineering backgrounds that require them to transition to the EER field (Borrego, 2007;Gardner & Willey, 2018), while the change in research direction can be perceived by peers as a mistake punished with reduced reward and recognition prospects (Dart et al., 2019;Williams & Figueiredo, 2012). Better understanding of the transition process has the potential to inform strategies that support EER engagement, in turn driving innovations that benefit students, the profession, and society more generally. ...
... As these individuals tend to come from technical engineering backgrounds, reconciling engineering training with the distinctly different expectations of the educational research domain creates challenges (Borrego, 2007;Gardner & Willey, 2018;Godfrey & Hadgraft, 2009). Additionally, these researchers must navigate perceptions of EER as a "soft" discipline (Dart et al., 2019;Gardner & Willey, 2018;Williams & Figueiredo, 2012) that lags the highly established technical engineering disciplines for research funding, acknowledgment of impact, and career progression (Borrego & Streveler, 2015). ...
... Consequently, a qualitative research design involving interviews was adopted to enable rich, descriptive, and in-depth analysis (Creswell & Poth, 2013). The study also builds upon the work in Dart et al. (2019) by widening the interview sample to address the researcher-participant challenges inherent in the earlier study. An open-ended qualitative approach was employed to ensure receptiveness and flexibility to the emergence of new themes from the data. ...
... Studies have found that many engineering education researchers are likely to have trained in other fields of research (such as applied engineering) before commencing engineering education research at a later point during their careers (Borrego & Bernhard, 2011;Dart et al., 2019). Research has also highlighted the phenomenon of Australian engineering academics transitioning to become engineering education researchers (Dart et al., 2019;Gardner & Willey, 2016. ...
... Studies have found that many engineering education researchers are likely to have trained in other fields of research (such as applied engineering) before commencing engineering education research at a later point during their careers (Borrego & Bernhard, 2011;Dart et al., 2019). Research has also highlighted the phenomenon of Australian engineering academics transitioning to become engineering education researchers (Dart et al., 2019;Gardner & Willey, 2016. ...
... A consequence of an increase in the number of engineering education doctoral graduates is a possible increased number of early career academics within engineering departments who have a track record focused primarily on educational research, rather than technical research. This poses challenges for engineering education researchers who are located within an engineering department where their colleagues primarily engage in technicallyfocused research, and against whom they are likely to be evaluated (Dart et al., 2019) in terms of Key Performance Indicators, promotion applications etc. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
CONTEXT Engineering education has been a growing field of research within Australia within the past few decades. While many researchers in the field traditionally started in non-educational research and then commenced educational research at a later point during their career, there has been an increasing trend of doctoral candidates completing their studies within the field of engineering education. This raises the question to what extent engineering education researchers tend to publish educational and non-educational research. This may have implications for the way that the research performance of researchers in the field may be evaluated. PURPOSE OR GOAL The purpose of this study was to attempt to characterise the historical research track records of Australian engineering education researchers who are active in the field, to understand the possible complexities of trying to compare oneself against other researchers in the field. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS Using a bibliometric analysis approach, 77 authors located in Australia were identified, who had published an article in either the Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, European Journal of Engineering Education, or Journal of Engineering Education during 2018 or 2019. The research track records of each author were retrieved from Scopus, resulting in over four thousand publications. Publications were classified as being either educationally or non-educationally focused, using keyword analysis of fields including publication title, publisher, author keywords, and subject area. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES Across the 77 authors it was found that on average, 35.5% of a researcher’s publications were educationally focused. Overall, a researcher’s h-index tended to be heavily based upon their non-educational publications, with educational publications playing less of a role. Researchers in the field on average published their first educational paper 7 years into their research career. However, within the past 5 years there is an evident increase in the number of researchers who have started their careers by publishing educational-based research. CONCLUSIONS The results demonstrate the wide diversity of research track records of researchers within the field. It is necessary for engineering education researchers in departments to be compared to others in more comparable fields such as education, as opposed to their direct colleagues who engage in technical research. It is also imperative to consider the extent of educational and non-educational publications, when comparing researchers within the field.
... "unscientific" [2], [3]. In addition, we usually found that the answer needed to be brief, as often, these are informal conversations in passing. ...
... The genesis for this paper occurred in the summer of 2021 at a virtual student meet-up of the Canadian Engineering Education Association -Association Canadienne de l'éducation en génie (CEEA-ACEG), where we commiserated on the difficulty in describing our research to more positivist engineers 3 . This led to our initial idea and research question: How can we synthesize our existing attempts to describe EER, and develop an approach to define our own research in an accessible and clear manner? ...
... However, academics within computing and engineering university departments can face challenges that their research on teaching, learning, or education is often seen as having less legitimacy (compared to research on technical topics) by faculty leadership and academic colleagues [5,6,7,8]. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Computing education (CE) is a growing, but well-established field of research. However, relatively little is known about the research profiles of CE researchers: whether they tend to publish more educational or non-educational papers and when during their career they tend to commence CE research. Using a scientometric approach and data from Scopus, 189 CE authors from Australia were identified who had published in the field between 2018 and 2021. Their research publication history was then retrieved, and each publication was classified as educational or non-educational using a computer aided approach. It was found that CE researchers have diverse research profiles; well established researchers tended to have fewer educational papers, new researchers tend to have more educational papers, and that it is becoming more common to start a research career doing CE research. This has implications for how the research field may be viewed by university computing departments.
... In previous Winter Schools, collaborations between participants have resulted in publications and continued working relationships (Matemba, Parker & Jolly 2018, Dart, Blackmore, Willey, Gardner, Jose, Sharma, Sloan, Jolly, 2019, Dart, Trad & Blackmore, 2021. A number of the facilitators of the 2022 Winter School are previous participants. ...
... In the context of Australian higher education, EER has been described as not ''real' research' (Gardner and Willey 2016) and early career researchers have been claimed to be 'more vulnerable' than those who had achieved a level of status and had 'freedom to choose to work on what interests them' (Gardner and Willey 2016). Elsewhere, a change to focussing on EER, which is perceived as a 'soft discipline', has been perceived as a mistake which is punished by reduced reward and recognition (Dart et al. 2019;Williams and Figueiredo 2012). ...
Article
Full-text available
This work adopts a case study approach to examine the emergence of engineering education research (EER) within the UK. First, a summary of the contextual factors influencing UK EER activity are presented. This section includes information pertaining to higher education (HE) policy, existing networks, and funding opportunities. Semi structured interviews are used to investigate who identifies as an engineering education researcher or is involved in engineering education research; how they define engineering education as a field of research; who they consider their audience to be; and the factors that inform their research questions, methodologies, whom they choose to collaborate with and where they disseminate their work. The findings are discussed in relation to the social, political, and economic systems in which engineering education exists. The study reveals a landscape in which EER research is largely unfunded, and is primarily conducted by intrinsically motivated academics who concentrate on topics of personal interest or local context, and who do not usually collaborate or publish within journals.
Article
Full-text available
In The Advancement of Learning, Huber and Hutchings (2005) state that the “scholarship of teaching and learning … is about producing knowledge that is available for others to use and build on” (p. 27). Can viewing the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) as an educational research activity help make SoTL findings more available and easier to build on? This chapter describes a program that prepared engineering faculty to conduct rigorous research in engineering education. Project evaluation revealed that engineering faculty had difficulty making some of the paradigm shifts that were presented in the project.
Article
Full-text available
The field of research (FoR) that an academic participates in is both a manifestation of, and a contributor to the development of their identity. When an academic changes that FoR the question then arises as to how they reconcile this change with their identity. This paper uses the identity-trajectory framework to analyse the discourse of 19 engineering academics in relation to their educational research. The findings reveal insights into the identity changes experienced in the transition from typical engineering academic to engineering education researcher. Participants’ responses illustrate how various aspects of their research activities contribute to the development of the networking and intellectual strands of their academic identity as engineering education researchers, and the effect of their university environment on this development. Conference participation was found to be an important contributor to progression of the intellectual and networking strands of identity-trajectory for researchers at all stages of development, although for different reasons.
Article
Full-text available
Engineering Education Research (EER) has been increasingly recognised as an autonomous field of research with an important global role to play in preparing engineers to meet the technological and social challenges of tomorrow. In this article, the authors use Fensham’s criteria for defining an emerging field of inquiry to characterize the evolution of EER in Portugal. They find that although there is as yet relatively little structural support for EER, data on research output suggests that the national and international contribution of Portuguese scholars to the field is on the increase in quantitative and qualitative terms. The authors identify challenges such as a perceived lack of legitimacy of the field and limited funding opportunities as factors limiting the development of this research field and hindering the diffusion and implementation of proven good practice at national level. They suggest that management support and availability of resources are key factors in meeting these challenges. They identify two important strategic goals for Portuguese EER scholars: research partnerships with international engineering education researchers and closer collaboration with researchers in learning science.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In this paper we first present a line of research into potential pathways to facilitate broader participation of engineering educators in education research, one that we propose to develop in various international contexts. Then in the main part of the work we focus on an application of our approach in one specific national context, that of Malaysia. A top-down pathway is proposed to describe recent developments in engineering education research in Malaysia. Analysis of publications from 2000 to date has indicated an increase in engineering education research since the introduction of outcome based education in the country. A Community of Practice in engineering education is beginning to emerge and some research universities are establishing research groups and centres of excellence for research in the field.
Article
Full-text available
Bourdieu's social theory offers a way of understanding some of the most important features of the field of educational research, while also providing educational researchers with a rich conceptual apparatus for their practice. This article addresses both of these methodological themes and the connections between them. We begin by outlining some key trends in educational research, mainly in Britain, over recent decades in terms of Bourdieu's Field Theory. Special attention is given to the relative positioning of researchers and the formation of an ‘avant‐garde’. We refer to the impact of educational policy and attacks on educational research, with attendant effects on the field, and on the formation and legitimacy of knowledge about educational processes. This analysis is followed by an example taken from a contemporary research project in which principles derived from Bourdieu's approach have been adopted in framing methodology. We give particular attention to the terms of the programme in which the project forms a part, and key aspects of it such as ‘user engagement’. Both methodological justifications and consequences are discussed, as well as tensions with dominant expectations of research processes and outcomes. Finally, we argue that, following Bourdieu's own public strategies of sociopolitical action, educational research methodology that is radically reflexive has the capacity to found a critically effective discourse with practical consequences.
Article
Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) has been sponsoring a Winter School in Engineering Education Research Methods since 2011. This paper describes how in 2017 attendees at the School applied what they had learned about a little-used data-gathering technique: observation. Starting with a Program Logic analysis, which identifies what an intervention ought to be doing, and hence what kind of evidence needs to be collected to describe its effect, some participants who had attended prior Winter Schools, were given the chance to collect the evidence. They found observation to be much harder to do well than one would think. This paper describes their experience and argues for the use of observational techniques in order to triangulate our data-gathering methods and improve the quality of our educational research. However, we also learned that a great benefit of observation comes from sustained reflection on the process and the data collected. Without such reflection, we argue observation is likely to produce rather thin results. abbriviations: AAEE - Australasian Association of Engineering Education; JEE - Australasian Journal of Engineering Education; WS2017 - 2017 Winter School
Book
On using Bourdieu in educational research
Article
Background In recent years, engineering education research (EER) has emerged as an internationally connected field of inquiry through the establishment of EER conferences, interest groups within engineering education societies, Ph.D. programs, and departments and centers at universities. Improving the preparation and training of engineers through EER is critical to solving major engineering challenges in sustainability, climate change, civil infrastructure, energy, and public health. PurposeThe purpose of this article is twofold: (1) to introduce EER as a field of inquiry, and (2) to describe the U.S. and Northern and Central European approaches to EER as two examples of the diversity of approaches. Scope/Method The article is organized around a framework from the European didaktik tradition, which focuses on answering the w-questions of education. The major sections describe what, why, to what end, where, who, and how EER is conducted. Conclusion Northern and Central European educational approaches focus on authentic, complex problems, while U.S. approaches emphasize empirical evidence. Additionally, disciplinary boundaries and legitimacy are more salient issues in the U.S., while the Northern and Central European Bildung philosophy integrates across disciplines toward development of the whole person. Understanding and valuing complementary perspectives is critical to growth and internationalization of EER.
Article
The purpose of this paper is to explore some challenges and promises when the epistemological diversity embedded in qualitative research traditions is introduced to research communities with one dominant research paradigm, such as engineering education. Literature is used from other fields and empirical data are used from engineering education, including the practices of the European Journal of Engineering Education and the Journal of Engineering Education, with the expectation that the ideas that are presented are relevant to a broad range of education disciplines. A number of challenges are identified as the epistemological diversity of qualitative research is introduced to the primarily positivist field of engineering education. Ultimately, embracing epistemological diversity holds the promise of researchers being able to ask: ‘What questions and answers become possible from these newly created positions and what can be learned from these alternative approaches?’.