Amy Slaton’s research while affiliated with Drexel University and other places

... Out of these insights we formed Audio for Inclusion, an NSF-funded project focused on translating student insights into accessible audio narratives as a resource for engineering faculty and faculty developers. We join other researchers engaged in methodological activism [7] who are using their research to promote change. We purposefully designed our research to empower individuals who are minoritized and present our findings in unique ways that are respectful of their lived experiences. ...

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Minoritized Student Audio Narratives to Influence Faculty's Empathic Understanding: Learning from Sophie and Enola

... These student standpoints reflect a "common sense" mentality prevalent within engineering education that suggest a lot of work needs to be done to unpack the social structure of engineering education that privileges decontextualized problems over contextualized problems [36]. Simply introducing contextualized problems into a course might garner a lot of student resistance [18], [34], [35] and even a backlash. Nonetheless, on an optimistic note, we did uncover a diversity of positive ways that some students think about the need for context. ...

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Just Add Context? Analyzing Student Perceptions of Decontextualized and Contextualized Engineering Problems and their Use of Storytelling to Create Context

... Race/ethnicity may further influence gender-based discrepancies in self-efficacy [72], [77]. The non-significance of self-efficacy for the BLI group demonstrates race/ethnicity-based differences in self-efficacy [74], [76], [78], [121], [122], [123]. The context-specific fluctuations in self-efficacy may particularly harm self-efficacy beliefs for Latino and African American men in the engineering classroom [75]. ...

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Equitable Engineering Identity? Race/Ethnicity and Gender Differences in the Predictors of Engineering Identity in First-Year Engineering

... Finally, some work has begun to consider how engineering was constructed in relation to ideas of bodily capacity and disability. Through processes of professional and disciplinary identity formation, ideas that linked intellectual ability, precision and accuracy, and the capacity for expert judgement with some bodies and not others became engrained in many engineering contexts (Slaton 2013). Despite these powerful and often invisible assumptions, disabled people have practised engineering since the profession began-for example, 18th century visually impaired road surveyor, John Metcalf, known as Blind Jack of Knaresborough (Smiles 1904), or 19th century lighthouse engineer Alan Stevenson who experienced chronic pain and intermittent paralysis while working for Scotland's Northern Lighthouse Board (Mair 1978). ...

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Historical Geographies of Engineering: Knowledges, Practices, Identities

... Partnerships with potential users of research results BIC in Verdín [28] Increase public scientific literacy Increase public engagement with science and technology Broadening participation Develop a diverse STEM workforce Develop a globally competitive STEM workforce Increase economic competitiveness of the U.S. 1 Proposals "that discussed how the research could help to address a societal problem or industrial or policy need. Descriptions of how results could improve understanding of a natural process, such as climate change, that did not directly state how the results could be useful to fix a problem or inform policy, were not counted as potential societal benefits" [24, pp. ...

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Extraordinary Engineering Impacts on Society: Over Seven Decades of Contributions from the National Science Foundation: A U.S. National Academy of Engineering Study

... Thus, this study is intended to characterize the perspectives and experiences of these two students as they engaged in a novel engineering design course. The ''small-n'' of this study lends it the power to dive deeply and qualitatively into the precise experience of these students in this context [44]. While this counters quantitative understandings of what counts as a powered study, and certainly has implications for how the results are interpreted, we hold that these kinds of case studies are important for uncovering and characterizing potential mechanisms and processes that underlie the perspective shift we are interested in. ...

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Teaching Engineering Design With People, Problems, and Prototypes

... In the last 20 years, community members have created doctoral programs and departments focused on engineering education (e.g., Aning et al., 2005;Benson et al., 2010;Borrego & Bernhard, 2011;Christy et al., 2019;Diefes-Dux et al., 2006;Katehi et al., 2004), collaborated to develop a field-wide taxonomy of the research landscape (Finelli et al., 2015(Finelli et al., , 2016, designed networking and professional development opportunities for new members (e.g., Borrego & Streveler, 2014;Faber, Smith-Orr, et al., 2017;Pawley et al., 2014;Sattler et al., 2012), and sought out field-level understanding of critical research areas through research agenda development (e.g., Brunhaver et al., 2019;Henderson et al., 2019;Lee et al., 2017;Martin et al., 2017) and community working groups (e.g., Finelli & Froyd, 2019;Koretsky, 2019;Shuman & Besterfield-Sacre, 2019;Simmons & Lord, 2019). Each of these actions has contributed to the evolution of the field. ...

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In pursuit of impact: Toward a contextualized theory of professional agency of engineering education scholars

... ABET "oozes zealotry, bewildering vocabulary, unexamined tenets, reliance on imperatives rather than indicatives, irrefutable claims, and support from administrators and politicians, not practitioners" (Woolston, 2008, p. 4). Accreditation seems not to be about education and learning but about power, with the goal of maintaining and expanding a particular cultural role and status in engineering (Slaton, 2012). Accreditation is big (financial) business that supports "corporate instrumentalism" and "corporatism in engineering," reducing the "professional independence of engineers" and the importance of public interest while increasing capitalist market expansion (Handford et al., 2019, p. 171). ...

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A feminist critical STANDPOINT analysis of engineering ethics education and the powers at play in accreditation, research, and practice

... Engineering has a history of exclusion for women and people of color that began with policy and persists as culture [2]. Engineering educators have documented these issues with respect to engineering identity and sense of belonging, detailing important pathways toward inclusivity and equity [1,[3][4][5][6]. While there has been a needed emphasis on broadening participation in who becomes an engineer, there is less attention on the experiences and perspectives of students outside of engineering, which can unsettle boundaries around engineering knowledge. ...

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Teaching Engineering Design With People, Problems, and Prototypes

... A situative approach includes consideration of the ongoing cultural histories of people and organizations, including systems of power and oppression (Collins & Bilge, 2020;Slaton, 2010). For example, engineering has a cultural history of participation and status largely limited to White men, leading to structures, practices, and values that reflect those participants (Pawley, 2019;Riley et al., 2014;Secules, 2019;Slaton, 2010). As participation broadens, shifts in departmental culture are negotiated. ...

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Inclusive Excellence in Practice: Integrating Equitable, Consequential Learning and an Inclusive Climate in Higher Education Classrooms and Institutions