CHARACTERIZING THE ENGINEERING EDUCATION GRADUATE STUDENT EXPERIENCE IN CANADA: DESCRIPTIVES

Abstract

Abstract – Four Canadian Engineering Education graduate students from the Universities of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Toronto, and Calgary are conducting a national mixed-methods research study to characterize the identity of graduate students studying engineering education in Canada. The first phase of this study comprised of the dissemination of a survey designed using McAlpine’s Identity-Trajectory framework to explore whom our engineering education graduate students are, how our graduate studies are manifest in this field, and how our academic identities are formed through the construction of our unique intellectual, institutional, and networking experiences. This paper presents select findings and descriptive analyses from these survey data. Findings show that participants in our study predominantly identify as female, come from engineering backgrounds, are over-stretched in terms of commitments, need better access to research funding and peer communities, actively present at conferences, and are sufficiently supported by their institutions and supervisors to feel that they can conduct quality research in engineering education. Noteworthy, is that the gender demographic in our study participants, which is predominantly female, is in contrast to the minority female demographic found in engineering graduate studies. Significantly, findings suggest that graduate students pursuing degrees in engineering education may be guided by a potentially unconscious positivistic approach to their research.