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Narrative Inquiry in Engineering Education: A Systematic Literature Review
... This holistic approach helps to improve the quality of our analysis [21]. Narrative analysis has been used in engineering education research to understand a variety of topics relevant to the field [2], [22], [23], [24]. For example, Walker used narrative analysis of interview data to understand complex engineering identities [24]. ...
... And not help, in the sense of, instead of the word help, maybe a better word is support. How can the gifts that someone has support the kinds of initiatives that the community is interested in?" (p. 7, 00:33:41-00:34: 22) However, instead of collaborative problem defining and solving, existing systems may still incentivize the academic researcher entering a community to solve a problem, which is a systemic problem that in some local cases has roots in colonialism. Furthermore, academic systems tend to value quantifiable results like publications and future grants, which may be at odds with the needs of the community being engaged; within the academic system, this lack of quantifiable output can be problematic, as Summer noted: "So from a perspective of the university it's like, 'Oh, there was no output to this research.'" ...
... A review of the state-of-the-art literature highlights that storytelling provides a structured approach, promotes reflection, and engages multiple sensory modalities, thereby enhancing student interest in complex engineering concepts [37]. Narrative inquiry, which gathers stories from engineering students, has also proven beneficial for gaining insights into their experiences [38]. Storytelling is recognized as an effective method to reduce cognitive load and increase student engagement in engineering courses, making it a powerful teaching tool, even when working with neurodivergent students [39]. ...
Considering the importance of education especially for the newer field of education, the current study proposes a novel teaching method based on storytelling that aims to enhance the creativity of students and improve the effectiveness of learning. The method was applied and analyzed through a one-year teaching course case study to introduce topics regarding renewable energy. Despite traditional education, in which learning occurs through the direct transfer of information, here a plot with the theme of mountaineering and nature using real photos and narration of a fictional story was set for the implementation of the proposed method. Therefore, the unintentional consequences of conventional teaching including quick content forgetting, failure to define the main purpose, improper reaction, and low attractiveness and even effectiveness were prevented. Considering the affective and cognitive domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy as well as analyzing the performances of students during the teaching course and their final feedback, the results showed promising improvements including more participation (100%), better retention of content (receiving (75%) and remembering (83.33%)). While the learners preferred the proposed method and found it more effective (75%) and attractive (79.17%) than conventional teaching. Moreover, it was shown that the proposed method can improve education criteria in other affective and cognitive domains and is recommended to be considered for implementation in other complex engineering topics.
This study explores the influence of assessment on student approaches to learning through the voice of the student. The aim is to understand how assessment practices in an engineering school shape how students respond through their learning approaches and behaviors. The study is framed using a learning-oriented assessment paradigm. Focus groups were conducted with second-, third- and fourth-year engineering students. Four groups were formed using academic performance as a sampling criterion. The findings are presented using selected emergent themes and rich, narrative descriptions. A range of expected and unexpected student responses to assessment practices is highlighted. These are discussed in the context of the assessment literature to provide insight into the relationship between assessment and learning. The study confirms the importance of constructive alignment in assessment design, and includes specific findings related to tutorials, assignments, feedback, and group work. The study reveals that assessment is a powerful driver of learning, and highlights the need for a more collaborative teaching and learning environment to shift learning in a positive direction.
In recent years there have been calls to increase both the number and diversity of engineering graduates within the UK. In addition to this, technological advancement and the need to solve complex socio-economic problems, have contributed toward a shift in the skills and abilities that practicing engineers require. Such changes have led to an increased focus on attracting students from a variety of backgrounds, who may want to study engineering for an increasing number of reasons. There is thus an interest in the factors which influence students to apply to study engineering. This paper describes the use of digital storytelling to understand the reasons that 82 engineering foundation year students from one UK-based institution, chose to study engineering. The research makes use of social cognitive career theory. The findings demonstrate the complex way in which environmental contextual factors influence self-efficacy, learning experiences, and career expectations. Based on these findings, some suggestions are made for attracting and retaining engineering students.
Background
Engineering education has observed considerable growth in academic makerspaces with initial data indicating significant potential for makerspaces to support learning.
Purpose/Hypothesis
Given gender disparities in engineering as a professional community of practice (CoP) and indications for makerspaces as sites for learning, educational researchers need to forge a better understanding of women's pathways into makerspaces, including the barriers that inhibit and the catalysts that broaden participation.
Design/Method
This study employed qualitative interviews with 20 women students who were identified as makers in order to gain insights into the characteristics of their pathways into university makerspaces.
Results
Using grounded theory development, four major aspects of students' pathways emerged: (1) early forms of apprenticeship through mentors; (2) overcoming and resisting limiting gendered expectations imposed by others in early experiences in unfamiliar makerspace CoPs, resulting in failed articulations of related communities; (3) successful articulations of community grounded in making-centered coursework and personal passions; and (4) relationships in college that expanded access, leadership, and visibility toward fuller participation in makerspace CoPs.
Conclusion
Educational interventions to broaden women's participation in makerspaces must be multipronged and attend to early childhood experiences, include supportive opportunities for women to participate in making in K-12 and university curricula, expand definitions of making to legitimize the arts and crafts as part of design, and create apprenticeship opportunities for women to mentor women in makerspaces. We must change the narrative of who makers are, what making is, and who belongs in makerspaces to reduce barriers and create inclusive making communities.
Undergraduate research experiences are becoming increasingly common in the United States and are encouraged in engineering as a way to give students “real world” problem-solving experience. We sought to understand the experiences of four U.S. students participating in an 8-week summer research program in Australia. Each student participated in interviews before, during, and after the program from which we constructed a narrative for each student describing their critical experiences. Narrative inquiry allows for holistic analysis of a phenomenon without categorizing or sub-setting the data, which can result in loss of context. Using this method, we identified themes across the four narratives to describe the multiple ways in which students assessed their “fit” in the research environment throughout the experience and how participating in the program influenced their future plans. Our findings provide insights for the design and implementation of research experiences both inside and outside of engineering courses.
Higher education provides plenty of opportunity for theory and in many cases, even the ability to apply theory in a laboratory setting. Yet, there remains limited opportunity for students to learn by doing through participation in authentic learning experiences. The purpose of this paper is to provide one potential solution for integrating authentic learning into the engineering classroom by cultivating the entrepreneurial mindset. As entrepreneurship serves as an integral part of the economy, developing an entrepreneurial mindset through authentic learning experiences is essential for engineers. While online discussion prompts represent a useful way for educators to facilitate student learning, less is known about how to facilitate online discussions in a way that truly cultivates an entrepreneurial mindset for engineering students. In this paper, the key intentions of entrepreneurially-minded learning are reviewed, and a guide for creating online discussions applicable to any engineering course is presented. Example online discussion prompts incorporating the entrepreneurial mindset are then shared from an Introduction to Engineering course. Results from a mixed methods survey instrument suggests positive impacts towards student perceptions of online discussions and development of the entrepreneurial mindset. Recommendations for effectively and efficiently facilitating online discussions for entrepreneurially-minded learning in the engineering classroom are offered.
As the problems that engineers are framing and solving are becoming more complex, it is becoming critical to develop a more nuanced understanding of learning that encompasses more than separate knowing and includes connected knowing. To better understand connected knowing within engineering students, we explore the role of emotion in engineering education. In particular, we attend to the primary research question, how do emotions underpin the narratives of engineering students? This narrative research project involved conducting interviews with 21 undergraduate engineering students from year one to five in their engineering program and from a diversity of engineering disciplines. Our findings suggest a trajectory of emotions including enjoyment of pre-engineering activities, nervousness about core classes, frustration and discouragement with core classes, and finally an overall satisfaction with the educational experience. Two constructed narratives are included to provide the reader with an individualized, contextual, and complex view of the lived reality of emotional trajectories. As engineering educators, the emotions of our engineering students may prove critical as we are preparing engineering graduates to make decisions and to contribute to some of the world's most pressing problems.
The field of engineering education has adapted different theoretical frameworks from a wide range of disciplines to explore issues of education, diversity, and inclusion among others. The number of theoretical frameworks that explore these issues using a critical perspective has been increasing in the past few years. In this review of the literature, we present an analysis that draws from Freire’s principles of critical andragogy and pedagogy. Using a set of inclusion criteria, we selected 33 research articles that used critical theoretical frameworks as part of our systematic review of the literature. We argue that critical theoretical frameworks are necessary to develop anti-deficit approaches to engineering education research. We show how engineering education research could frame questions and guide research designs using critical theoretical frameworks for the purpose of liberation.
Background
Quantitative researchers have noted the impact of mentoring and support programming for students from underrepresented groups in engineering. Qualitative researchers have also noted the importance of student agency in persistence through marginalization. Nevertheless, challenges and questions remain in identifying practices which are effective in supporting underrepresented students.
Purpose
The study applies scholarship from critical theory and narrative as a new resource for approaching and understanding the process of supporting marginalized student agency.
Method
A longitudinal interview study with a female undergraduate engineering student, Emilia, developed into a way for her to process marginalizing educational experiences and to develop new narratives that expanded her agency. After an in‐depth member check, Emilia became a co‐author contributing a post hoc account of the impact of these discussions.
Results
Our analysis indicates that naming one's own oppression and creating narratives that repurpose and resituate stereotypical stories of oppression was a liberatory act for Emilia. We trace three marginalizing themes of the participant's experience that are subverted and resisted through the student co‐constructed narrative.
Conclusions
The paper builds theory for diversity support, suggesting critical theorizing may present a new form of agency not yet represented in the literature. It also points to possible value for student participants from qualitative methodologies exploring student experiences. Finally, it suggests supporting critical theorizing as a potential new orientation for diversity practitioners.
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.
Background
The field of engineering education research is adopting an increasingly diverse range of qualitative methods. These developments necessitate a coherent language and conceptual framework to critically engage with questions of qualitative research quality.
Purpose/Hypothesis
This article advances discussions of qualitative research quality through sharing and analyzing a methodologically diverse, practice‐based exploration of research quality in the context of five engineering education research studies.
Design/Method
As a group of seven engineering education researchers, we drew on the collaborative inquiry method to systematically examine questions of qualitative research quality in our everyday research practice. We used a process‐based, theoretical framework for research quality as the anchor for these explorations.
Results
We constructed five practice explorations spanning grounded theory, interpretative phenomenological analysis, and various forms of narrative inquiry. Examining the individual contributions as a whole yielded four key insights: quality challenges require examination from multiple theoretical lenses; questions of research quality are implicitly infused in research practice; research quality extends beyond the objects, procedures, and products of research to concern the human context and local research setting; and research quality lies at the heart of introducing novices to interpretive research.
Conclusions
This study demonstrates the potential and further need for the engineering education community to advance methodological theory through purposeful and reflective engagement in research practice across the diverse methodological approaches currently being adopted.
Employees are expected to be highly skilled and creative in the 21st century global market. Yet, engineering graduates are being criticized that they lack creativity skills which are deemed important in the working environment. Thus, there is a need for them to be exposed to a learning means that can unleash their creative potentials. Since digital storytelling (DST) has been a promising platform for creativity as claimed by previous literature, the study aimed to understand the creative processes of two engineering students in their DST development in the English reading class. Both, one being an above-average, while the other a below-average, were selected based on their reading results in an English reading placement test. The span for the DST project was three weeks. The case study research method was employed. Data were obtained from observational field notes, documents, interview transcripts and digital stories. Results showed that both had well displayed the classic creative process outlined by Wallas (1926). Since previous literature has noted that people with higher cognitive abilities would produce better creative processes than ones with lower cognitive abilities, the former‟s creative performance was expected. Nevertheless, being focused, interested, resilient and self-disciplined, the latter proved himself praiseworthy. It is thus recommended that students who are enthusiastic will benefit from DST since they will go to the distance to be creative.
First generation college students can increase both the number and diversity of students in engineering. We use Lin's Network Theory of Social Capital, which describes relationships as being embedded with resources used to achieve a goal, as a framework for understanding undergraduate students' decisions to enroll in engineering studies. While much of the discourse on social capital in higher education focuses on inequalities and deficits experienced by first generation college students, our work helps to transition the discussion by highlighting the positive influence of education personnel as well as teachers and mentors associated with institutionalized programs. We use narrative analysis and two types of explicitly integrated complementary qualitative data to expand on Lin's theory. This paper presents an exemplar narrative describing what Lin calls the "invisible hand of social capital;" that is, when particularly resource-rich networks do not necessitate an individual knowingly mobilizing resources because information and resources are received in routine exchanges. Our findings support the need for continued proactive outreach, educational, and support systems that can serve as research-rich networks for first generation college students.
Background
The emerging discipline of engineering education research is increasingly embracing a diverse range of interpretive research methods, whose adoption is characterized by a lack of coherent ways to conceptualize, communicate, and judge the quality of interpretive inquiries. Yet fields that have traditionally employed these methods do not offer a consensus about research quality. PurposeThis article presents reflections on challenges to research quality in an example interpretive engineering education study, and offers a quality framework that emerged from this study as a coherent, discipline-specific view on interpretive research quality. Design/Method
Analysis of the prior study of engineering students' competency formation by the author(s) is combined with a synthesis of the literature from the broad intellectual traditions of the interpretive paradigm to inform the development of a theoretical framework of research quality. ResultsDrawing on the engineering metaphor of quality management, we propose a systematic, process-oriented framework of research quality along two dimensions: a process model locates quality strategies throughout the research process, and a typology systemizes fundamental aspects of validation (theoretical, procedural, communicative, and pragmatic) and the concept of process reliability to explicate quality strategies in their fundamental contribution to substantiating knowledge claims. Conclusion
The quality framework provides a way to develop and demonstrate overall research quality in the interpretive inquiry by shifting attention away from assessing the research quality of a final product. Rather, the framework provides guidance to systematically document and explicitly demonstrate quality considerations throughout the entire research process.
This paper argues that engineering students should learn a variety of research methodologies and methods covering the spectrum from the positivist quantitative approach to a more interpretative qualitative approach. This will ensure that as professional engineers, they will be equipped with the requisite knowledge, skills and understanding to choose the appropriate research method or mixture of methods in any
particular context.
There is a parallel and more recent paper published in Lighting Research & Technology - A different type of lighting research - a qualitative methodology. This is available at this link https://arrow.tudublin.ie/engscheleart2/105/
As demand for qualified workers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields continues to rise, there is a need to not only consider how to improve engagement and retention, but also an opportunity to strive towards broadening participation. To create a more equitable workforce, and in particular, one that encourages the enrollment and persistence of underrepresented minorities, pedagogy centered around cultivating inclusivity is key. Along these lines, empathy as a construct can play a crucial role in aiding students to consider the impact of their own decisions and behaviors on others and society. Given the necessity of embedding the concept of empathy within post-secondary education, we sought to understand how others have approached empathy in curricula, projects, and practice. We applied Zaki’s model of empathy —which triangulates “sharing,” “thinking about,” and “caring about,” as the theoretical framework guiding the inquiry— and performed a systematic literature review. We sought answers to the following research questions: 1) How have educators integrated empathy development into learning activities in STEM?; 2) What pedagogical approaches have been shown to promote empathy of students in STEM?; and 3) How have scholars approached the development of different kinds of empathy in classrooms? After querying Google Scholar, analyzing more than 10,000 publications, and applying the inclusion/exclusion criteria, we identified 63 articles that centered on empathy development in STEM education, and specific learning activities or courses working to achieve this goal. The results were defined in terms of the patterns observed, topics assessed, and contributions made to the existing body of knowledge. Although there may be a range of approaches employed, such as through storytelling or role play, embedding empathy can not only shape students’ internalization of the concept, and the resultant shift of mindset, but it can also be critical to formulating their connection to the discipline and their exchanges with others. The publications obtained, and subsequent analysis, can be of tremendous value towards understanding how departments can create more inclusive curricula and environments. The conclusions from this analysis highlight the relevance of empathy and offers educators and academia ideas about how to foster compassion in students, and potential implementations which could enhance teaching in STEM fields.
Undergraduate STEM retention has been a longstanding concern. Specifically, majors such as engineering have experienced a high dropout rate consistently in the past several decades. This study is aimed at understanding factors contributing to making the engineering major challenging, and individual factors that help first-year engineering students persevere in the major. Eight first-year engineering students participated in the study by completing an illustrated road map sketch of their first-year experiences and a semi-structured interview. All participants considered the engineering major challenging due to the amount of time and effort required to be successful in the courses. Being academically underprepared for first-year courses was a drawback, but only some participants were discouraged by the academic challenges. Most importantly, students’ perception of academic and social fit within the major influenced their self-efficacy, help-seeking behaviour, and intent to persist.
Remarking on the justification for entrepreneurship as a critical component for economic and employment creation, emphasis on building a robust student’s entrepreneurship mind-set has received less attention, especially in this era of global health pandemic (Covid-19). This knowledge chasm stimulates the need to understand students’ entrepreneurship mind-set in this era of paid employment loss. A total of 24 final year students were selected on purpose and snowball across two faculties with the Mind-set theoretical analysis reviewed as the theoretical leaning. The results reveal the development of students’ entrepreneurship mind-set to include attitude development, preparedness, being business savvy and a stimulating business environment. Others include effective mobilization of human and material resources and appropriate students’ cognitive cognizance. The persistent economic downturn was argued as the link between the global health pandemic and the dwindling rate of graduate jobs, whereas appropriate entrepreneurship education, content and curriculum was advanced as important indicators for a sustaining students’ entrepreneurial mind-set. The study recommends the university administrators in their effort to implement entrepreneurship education across the strata of the university as a pathway to economic sustenance and development. This effort, however, must be channeled to ensure students are greatly motivated towards entrepreneurship venture.
Although many Black male students begin their collegiate experience at community colleges, a greater understanding of their four-year transfer experience is needed. This qualitative narrative study critically explores pathways of Black male engineering students who transferred from community colleges to four-year research-extensive institutions. The following research question guided the study: How do personal, social, and environmental factors shape the transfer experiences of Black male engineering students who attend four-year institutions? Thirteen engineering students between the ages of 21 and 56, with a mean age of 26 years, were selected for semi-structured interviews. Complementary data from online demographic surveys, researcher observation guides, memos, and field notes were obtained. The researcher used the constant comparative method to analyze and interpret data. Findings indicate that collaborative interactions within engineering communities of practice, especially with other transfer students, foster the development of Black male transfer students’ engineering mind-sets and complex problem-solving skills. Study habits and/or peer-led study groups established at community colleges translated to the four-year institution, influencing engineering student-success and enhancing knowledge through communities of practice. Lastly, participants’ responses suggest that faculty and staff interactions can influence their academic, social and professional experiences on campus. This study suggests the importance of communities of practice in the development of Black male transfer students’ engineering career at four-year institutions.
Thematic analysis is a widely used, yet often misunderstood, method of qualitative data analysis. It is a useful and accessible tool for qualitative researchers, but confusion regarding the method’s philosophical underpinnings and imprecision in how it has been described have complicated its use and acceptance among researchers. In this Guide, we outline what thematic analysis is, positioning it in relation to other methods of qualitative analysis, and describe when it is appropriate to use the method under a variety of epistemological frameworks. We also provide a detailed definition of a theme, as this term is often misapplied. Next, we describe the most commonly used six-step framework for conducting thematic analysis, illustrating each step using examples from our own research. Finally, we discuss advantages and disadvantages of this method and alert researchers to pitfalls to avoid when using thematic analysis. We aim to highlight thematic analysis as a powerful and flexible method of qualitative analysis and to empower researchers at all levels of experience to conduct thematic analysis in rigorous and thoughtful way.
Background
Women and men of color and White women participate in American engineering education in lower proportions than they represent in the general U.S. population. Much existing engineering education research uses individual‐level (such as psychological) theories to explain this difference. The study reported here instead takes a structural perspective, asking how social relations are coordinated in engineering education.
Purpose
This study explores how the intersection of ruling relations, critical race, and feminist theories can investigate how gender and race are built into engineering education's institutional structure.
Design/Method
This study used interviews collected from 17 women and men of color and White women who were engineering undergraduate students at U.S. universities. The interviews were drawn from a project that takes as its premise that learning from such small numbers of students facilitates analyzing data intersectionally. The primary analysis used narrative methods through repeated readings.
Results
I offer empirically based illustrations of ruling relations in U.S. universities and schools of engineering that unduly impact minoritized populations. These illustrations include discussions of financial aid knowledge, meeting the needs of transfer and Native students, and how schools crafting “the ideal student” as a young, single White male problematically impact minoritized students. The results illustrate how ruling relations structure engineering education in White‐ and male‐dominated ways.
Conclusions
This paper offers questions to help readers consider how ruling relations race and gender their own institutions. In addition, it offers an interpretive, emergent method for interrogating institutional structure and ideas for future work using ruling relations in engineering education research.
Background
While recent engineering education research has focused on the pathways that students take as they transition into engineering programs in higher education, little has explicitly focused on developing an understanding of students as they select and transfer into engineering from other majors.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how engineering students enter the engineering field by comparing commonalities across their experiences. Given recent literature that describes student dissatisfaction toward, misinformation about, and attrition in engineering programs, we explore the lived experiences of students entering the engineering field, with a particular focus on students changing their majors to engineering.
Methods
This paper synthesizes the stories of 21 undergraduate engineering students from a southeastern research university, 15 of whom began their undergraduate program in other majors and transferred into engineering. We employ a unique narrative structuralizing scheme based on Campbell's hero's journey and use the metaphor of the beginning of the journey to understand student trajectories that locate students in engineering studies.
Conclusions
With this information, we can better understand student conceptions of the engineering field when they enter; who enters the engineering field and why; how students’ expectations are met or not in engineering programs; and what are the factors that ultimately contribute to first‐year retention in engineering programs. In general, students entering engineering tend to have a limited understanding of what is entailed in an engineering program and benefit from interactions with advisors, teachers, and peers in the field. Such interactions may help students to more clearly decide what aspects of engineering are appropriate for them to pursue and help them to persist as they begin coursework.
Background
Despite the wide adoption of entrepreneurship by United States engineering programs, there have been few advances in how to measure the influences of entrepreneurial education on engineering students. We believe the inadequate growth in engineering entrepreneurship assessment research is due to the limited use of research emerging from the broader entrepreneurship education assessment community.
Purpose
This paper explores entrepreneurship education assessment by documenting the current state of the research and identifying the theories, variables, and research designs most commonly used by the broader community. We then examine if and how these theories and constructs are used in engineering entrepreneurship education.
Scope/Method
Two literature databases, Scopus® and Proquest, were searched systematically for entrepreneurship education assessment research literature. This search yielded 2,841 unique papers. Once inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, 359 empirical research papers were coded for study design, theory, variables measured, instruments, and validity and reliability.
Conclusions
While there has been growth in entrepreneurship education assessment research, little exchange of ideas across the disciplines of business, engineering, and education is occurring. Nonempirical descriptions of programs outweigh empirical research, and these empirical studies focus on affective, rather than cognitive or behavioral, outcomes. This pattern within the larger entrepreneurship community is mirrored in engineering where the use of theory‐based, validated entrepreneurship education assessment instruments generally focuses on the context of intent to start a new company. Given the engineering community's goals to support engineering entrepreneurship beyond business creation, the engineering education community should consider developing assessment instruments based in theory and focused on engineering‐specific entrepreneurship outcomes.
This paper reports on narrative inquiry research conducted with nontraditional undergraduates as they pursued a common goal of becoming engineers. Participants were enrolled in a two-year engineering transfer program offered in the evenings, via synchronous broadcast distance instruction, by a public, land- grant university situated in the western United States. The purpose of the research was to understand the experiences of nontraditional students during the two-year program, which they accessed at regional campuses within or near their local communities, and later as they transitioned to the four-year university campus located in another city away from these communities. In this paper, personal, social, and institutional tensions, arising from instances of deficit thinking and emerging from within the participants‟ lived and told stories, are identified and examined. Despite deep, personal reactions to the bias they experienced, participants overcame perceptions of personal deficiency to pursue and achieve their goal of becoming engineers. Participant counter stories further revealed ways in which their unique life experiences alternately served to enhance and deepen their engineering education.
In this paper, we describe a method for performing structural narrative analysis that draws on narratology and literary studies, moving structural narrative analysis from a focus on examining linguistic parts of narratives to understanding thematic structures that make up the whole narrative. We explore the possibility of constructing participant narratives using Campbell’s monomyth as a coding and structuralizing scheme. The method we describe is the response to the question, “How might we find a reliable way to construct ‘smooth’ stories (with attention to the structures of stories) so that we might compare trajectories of student experiences?” To answer this question, we use narrative interviews from a larger study to show how this method can make sense of interviews and construct accessible and useful participant narratives. We close by providing an example narrative constructed using the monomyth coding scheme and discussing benefits and difficulties associated with this method.
The Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research is the critical reference source for the growing field of engineering education research, featuring the work of world luminaries writing to define and inform this emerging field. The Handbook draws extensively on contemporary research in the learning sciences, examining how technology affects learners and learning environments, and the role of social context in learning. Since a landmark issue of the Journal of Engineering Education (2005), in which senior scholars argued for a stronger theoretical and empirically driven agenda, engineering education has quickly emerged as a research-driven field increasing in both theoretical and empirical work drawing on many social science disciplines, disciplinary engineering knowledge, and computing. The Handbook is based on the research agenda from a series of interdisciplinary colloquia funded by the US National Science Foundation and published in the Journal of Engineering Education in October 2006.
Qualitative research has at last achieved full respectability in the academic sphere, and the success of commercial qualitative market research is demonstrably substantial. This article traces the history of qualitative research back to the time when both strands meet, in an academic source aware of the commercial value of applied psychology, drawing upon techniques that seek to explore and explain human behaviour. It is argued that the modern understanding of qualitative research comprises a 'package' of component parts, and that the essential elements of these were first identifiable, beginning in 1925, in the work and advocacy of the psychologist, Paul Felix Lazarsfeld.
The authors introduce four models: holistic-content reading; holistic-form reading; categorical-content reading; and categorical-form reading. They present two complete narratives so that readers can compare the authors' interpretations against the actual text as well as analyze the stories on their own. The subsequent chapters provide readings, interpretations and analyses of the narrative data from the models.
Self Determination Theory (SDT) states that intrinsic motivation (IM) in a particular context is supported by increasing an individual's sense of autonomy, relatedness, and competence with respect to that context. When instructors use IM-supportive methods, they promote learning of class content. This research seeks to describe through narratives how students’ motivation changes in response to a pedagogy designed with fostering intrinsic motivation as a primary class objective. After being observed in the classroom of an IM-supportive class conversion, students were interviewed to document their narratives. Interview transcripts were coded to describe students' motivational orientation throughout the class. The majority of interviewed students demonstrated increases in intrinsic motivation for studying the class content. The interviews revealed that individual choice, interpersonal relationships, and constructive failure were critical in moving students toward intrinsic motivation. While the IM-supportive learning environment did not affect all students equally, the common themes of individual choice, interpersonal relationships, and constructive failure provide deeper insights into how to improve and assess students’ motivational changes in technical engineering classes.
Mit „narrative Identität“ bezeichne ich jene Art von Identität, zu der das menschliche Wesen durch die Vermittlung der narrativen Funktion Zugang haben kann. Es ist jedoch wichtig, vor Beginn der Untersuchung eine schwerwiegende semantische Zweideutigkeit wegzuräumen, die auf dem Begriff der Identität lastet. Entsprechend dem lateinischen idem und ipse, überlagern sich hier zwei unterschiedliche Bedeutungen: Gemäß der ersten Bedeutung, der im Sinne von idem, ist „identisch“ gleichbedeutend mit „äußerst ähnlich“, „gleichartig“. Gleich bzw. Gleichheit impliziert eine wie auch immer geartete Form von Unveränderlichkeit in der Zeit. Das Gegenteil wäre „verschieden“, „veränderlich“. Gemäß der zweiten Bedeutung, der im Sinne von ipse, ist „identisch“ mit dem Begriff der Ipseität, der Selbstheit verknüpft. Jemand ist mit sich selbst identisch. Das Gegenteil wäre hier „anders“, „fremd“. Diese zweite Bedeutung impliziert an sich keinerlei Festlegung in Bezug auf die Permanenz, die Beständigkeit, die Beharrlichkeit in der Zeit (wie Kant sagt). Das Problem besteht eher darin, die verschiedenartigen Verbindungsmöglichkeiten zwischen Permanenz und Veränderung zu erforschen, die mit der im Sinne von Selbstheit verstandenen Identität vereinbar sind.
The psychological self may be construed as a reflexive arrangement of the subjective "I" and the constructed "Me," evolving and expanding over the human life course. The psychological self begins life as a social actor, construed in terms of performance traits and social roles. By the end of childhood, the self has become a motivated agent, too, as personal goals, motives, values, and envisioned projects for the future become central features of how the I conceives of the Me. A third layer of selfhood begins to form in the adolescent and emerging adulthood years, when the self as autobiographical author aims to construct a story of the Me, to provide adult life with broad purpose and a dynamic sense of temporal continuity. An integrative theory that envisions the psychological self as a developing I-Me configuration of actor, agent, and author helps to synthesize a wide range of conceptions and findings on the self from social, personality, cognitive, cultural, and developmental psychology and from sociology and other social sciences. The actor-agent-author framework also sheds new light on studies of self-regulation, self-esteem, self-continuity, and the relationship between self and culture.
© The Author(s) 2013.