Abstract
Males are generally overrepresented in higher education engineering. However, the magnitude of this variance differs between countries and engineering fields. Evidence associated with the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis suggests that perceptions of intelligence held by actors within engineering affects the engagement of underrepresented groups. This study examined perceptions of an intelligent engineer held by undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students in Ireland and Sweden, countries selected based on their levels of female representation in engineering education. It was hypothesised that there would be a significant difference in perceptions between countries. A survey methodology was employed in which a random sample of Irish and Swedish university students completed two surveys. The first asked respondents to list characteristics of an intelligent engineer, and the second asked for ratings of importance for each unique characteristic. The results indicate that an intelligent engineer was perceived to be described by seven factors; practical problem solving, conscientiousness, drive, discipline knowledge, reasoning, negative attributes, and inquisitiveness when the data was analysed collectively, but only the five factors of practical problem solving, conscientiousness, drive, discipline knowledge and negative attributes were theoretically interpretable when the data from each country was analysed independently. A gender × country interaction effect was observed for each of these five factors. The results suggest that the factors which denote intelligence in engineering between Irish and Swedish males and females are similar, but differences exist in terms of how important these factors are in terms group level definitions. Future work should consider the self-concepts held by underrepresented groups with respect to engineering relative to the factors observed in this study.
Highlights
Higher education engineering fields are generally male dominated (Cheryan et al, 2011, 2017; Hunt, 2016; Sultan et al, 2018; Sunny et al, 2017; Verdın et al, 2018; Wiebe et al, 2018; Yoder, 2017)
In response to the gender gap in third level engineering and stemming from the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis, this study aimed to identify and determine the importance of perceived characteristics of an intelligent engineer from the perspective of higher education engineering students across two countries, Ireland and Sweden, using a survey methodology pioneered by Sternberg et al (1981)
Unlike the previous studies by Sternberg et al (1981) and Buckley et al (2019), the results of this study indicated that the prototypical definition of an intelligent engineer held by Irish and Swedish engineering students reflects a five factor model with these factors appearing to represent practical problem solving, conscientiousness, drive, discipline knowledge, and negative attributes
Summary
Higher education engineering fields are generally male dominated (Cheryan et al, 2011, 2017; Hunt, 2016; Sultan et al, 2018; Sunny et al, 2017; Verdın et al, 2018; Wiebe et al, 2018; Yoder, 2017). This is problematic as a lack of diversity suggests a loss of potential talent, and the gender disparity indicates the existence of entry barriers to women. Having an understanding of such field-specific characteristics would allow for investigations into people’s self-rating of those characteristics and how, in relation to their gender and culture, these relate to desirable outcomes such as interest, motivation and performance
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
