Approaching Questions Of Research Quality In An Interpretive Investigation Of Engineering Students’ Competence Formation

Abstract

This paper introduces an interpretive research approach as one possible way to investigate complex social aspects of engineering education. With the aim of exploring questions of rigor in the interpretive enquiry, we present the details of a study into competence formation of engineering students. The study employed focus groups with engineering students from Germany, Australia and the US, to investigate the phenomenon of Accidental Competency formation. After reviewing research design, data gathering and interpretation procedure we present examples for the different types of findings produced in the interpretive enquiry. These results take the form of explanatory patterns, rich descriptions and an applicability study. Drawing on examples from the research, we offer the following three propositions as a starting point for discussing the quality of interpretive research in engineering education: (i) traditional criteria of validity and reliability are not directly applicable to the interpretive enquiry; (ii) alternative criteria such as trustworthiness or authenticity do not offer an overall measure of research quality; (iii) to mitigate this, we propose a process view of establishing research quality in a documented and demonstrated procedure.