Exploring Professional Identity Development Research on Displaced Higher Education Students

Abstract

In university, students develop professionally in ways that affect their ability to find and retain jobs after graduation. Outlined curriculum goals ensure students gain conceptual understanding and practical skills, but throughout their enrollment, students also develop their professional identities in ways that are less understood. Positively formed professional identities gain students’ entrances into a professional community, making the transition to work more seamless [1], [2], however, scholars concernedly note that a large population of students face violence, natural disasters, and pandemics that disrupt their education and development [3]. This makes displaced students who are facing forced migration particularly vulnerable to an incomplete professional identity formation.Researchers have begun to study the challenges displaced students face as they develop professionally and personally towards gainful employment in resettlement contexts [4], [5], finding that displaced students negotiate and renegotiate both personal and professional identities [6], [7], [8] upon migration. This negotiation and competition of identity happens in ways that are socially embedded [9] and can impinge on students’ development.These issues may be particularly challenging for engineering students, where tightly structured curricula make disruptions even more problematic and where a sense of belonging and connection to peer groups are crucial to success [10]. However, we do not yet have a clear comparative understanding of displaced student experiences in engineering, nor do we understand how displacement contexts impact displaced student professional development broadly. To that end, this scoping literature review and research full paper seeks to summarize and characterize current research on the influences on professional identity development in displaced university students broadly, laying the groundwork for future discipline-specific research. The study describes the contextual barriers to displaced students’ professional identity development in multiple disciplines, and then focuses on engineering-specific issues and complementary supports. Preliminary findings indicate that engineering-specific nuances exist in professional identity development for displaced students based on discipline-specific values, attitudes, conventions, and approaches. Uncovering these nuances helps ensure educators better facilitate positive professional identity development in displaced engineering students across disciplines, which is aligned with the achievement of the sustainable development goals.