Space Invaders in Engineering: Body, Gender, Knowledge Experience and Belonging in Engineering Students in Chile

Gender and diversity studies may attract more students, especially females, into science and engineering. Moreover, teaching the students competence in gender and diversity studies is a way to teach knowledge and skills which engineering and natural sciences students may need in their professional careers. Therefore professional training for science and engineering students should include topics such as social justice, ethics, gender equality, cultural identity, and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. It might be a challenge for students coming from a traditional physics or engineering programme to transgress the boundaries and engage with fundamental thinking styles, methods, theories, and concepts of gender and diversity studies. Nevertheless, it will certainly be an exciting, enriching, and future-oriented challenge, as long as the curriculum and teaching methods keep the target group, their background, knowledge, special needs, and interests in mind.

Background. Food resilience is the ability of the food system to adapt to external and internal disturbances and maintain the outcome of food security. This paper focuses on shaping the concept of urban food resilience regarding the operation of urban food infrastructure and its capacity to provide food security. Methods. To achieve this, a methodology based on the pillars defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for food security, i.e., availability, accessibility, and stability, is used, operationalized from a spatial approach, and evaluated in terms of urban food resilience. Three simple indexes are built, i.e., diversity, redundancy, and short-term stability, and combined into a composite index: the Urban Food Resilience Index (UFRI). Results. The results are analysed from a spatial and quantitative perspective, linking scores with urban surface area, population, and density. The study examines the reality of Chilean intermediate cities distributed throughout the country, using the La Serena–Coquimbo Conurbation as a case study. Conclusions. The ultimate goal is to provide a straightforward methodology for assessing urban food resilience in countries with limited data access, thereby providing a foundation for informed urban planning decision-making.

Evaluating the relationship between social media use frequency and entrepreneurial perceptions and attitudes among students

There have been global economic crises and inflation based on fluctuations of oil price, supply shock, demand shock, and interest rate shock since the 1970s. On the one hand, the cost of living has been increasing and people complain about how life is too expensive. On the other hand, people donate huge amounts of clothes to charity shops in New Zealand and this situation causes a big waste crisis. It is very clear that there is an excessive spending behavior on goods. The aim of this study is to examine the ‘Space Invaders’ TV production in terms of excessive shopping behaviors/shopaholics and decluttering within ecopedagogy. A case study within a qualitative approach was used as methodology in this study. The data was collected by discourse analysis. At the end of this study, three common points were determined: Excessive shopping behavior; cluttered homes and uncontrolled budget. It is thought that ecopedagogy-based education programs should be designed to improve critical thinking skills of people and to change their behavior socially, economically and environmentally.

Teaching and learning in most current university lectures has remained unchanged for centuries and nowadays, large lecture classes are a fact at universities. Technologies such as Classroom Response Systems have been designed to ease the adoption of new pedagogical practice in these contexts; however, these pose technological, economic and pedagogical limitations to teachers, students and institutions. In this paper, we present a feasibility study of a system that allows students to take snapshots of paper-based, handwritten solutions to a given task with their devices, and then converts this input to vector graphics that are automatically hosted in a cloud-based storage service, such as Google Drive. The teacher can then discuss students’ solutions and provide elaborate formative feedback in class. We report on the findings of a feasibility study with engineering students in Chile, which validate the practicality of the approach. After this validation we plan to integrate optical character recognition capabilities in the system, in order to support programming and physics education.

Background/Context It is well documented that Black doctoral students in engineering and computing fields experience more stress and strain during doctoral training than their White and Asian peers. However, few studies have examined how Black engineering and computing doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers experience these challenges and stressors or focused on the psychological effects, behavioral responses, or health costs for these students. We interviewed 48 Black PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in engineering and computing departments to find out how they describe, make sense of, and cope with stressors and strains in their training programs. Study participants (29 men and 19 women) ranged from first-year doctoral students to recent PhDs. Students attended various institutions and institution types, primarily in eastern and central time zones. Nine participants attended historically Black colleges and universities, and though we anticipated that their experiences would be vastly different, their experiences closely resembled those of students in other institutions. Research Design Each person participated in either an individual interview or focus group. Data were collected via video- and audio-recording. All focus groups took place at either a national engineering-/computing-related conference or at the students’ home institutions. Twenty-three participants were interviewed, while the remainder participated in focus groups of three to five students (maximum of ten). Interviews and focus groups were semistructured, using open-ended questions but allowing some flexibility to develop new ideas and order topics differently. Data Collection and Analysis This study employed transcendental phenomenology, using three steps to investigate and make meaning of participants’ experiences: examining the phenomenon with intentionality, eidetic reduction, and constitution of meaning. Transcendental reduction allowed for examining the experience of Black doctoral students in engineering and computing in general and separating what the research perspectives supplied from what our intuitions offered, guided by our theoretical frameworks of role strain and racial battle fatigue. Transcendental phenomenology also gave the authors a context to examine and disclose our own experiences and feelings. Findings Consistent with prior research on role strain and John Henryism (i.e., trying to overcome a chronic stressor by working harder), we found that seeking success in training, employment, work, or career was more important to these Black graduate students and postdocs than safeguarding their mental or physical health. Meeting the demands of a PhD program or postdoctoral fellowship were critical priorities congruent with their phase of life. Their focus and sacrifice may have helped them complete their degrees, but our findings suggest that these strategies exacted psychological, emotional, and physical costs. The study deepened our understanding of significant interrelated dynamics for this population in four key ways. We found that (a) the stresses and strains made students question their qualifications; (b) racialized experiences were often the source of stress, strain, and academic performance anxiety; (c) discordance between the racial make-up of their academic environments and their racialized engineering and computing identities appeared to exacerbate impostor phenomenon; and (d) the students’ proactive coping mechanisms took an emotional toll. Participants discussed the nature and sources of their feelings of self-doubt. The implications extend beyond the dwindling numbers of Black students earning STEM doctorates; this racial climate also affects the academic workforce and the professional landscape. Although Black researchers who leave academia after completing doctoral training can influence scientific innovation through other positions, it is alarming and problematic that potentially qualified future professors are dissuaded from pursuing academic careers because of their training experiences. Their absence from faculty can hinder critical innovation, breakthroughs, and the training of succeeding generations of scholars who might have learned from and collaborated with them. Conclusions and Recommendations The added stress, strain, and toll on Black students’ well-being is an underappreciated reason for their relinquishing of academic careers. Our findings illustrate the students’ resilience and strength. Continued research on added stressors (e.g., impostor syndrome, racialized stress) and strengths could add much-needed consideration of cultural, structural, and interpersonal racism and the ways that Black students earning doctoral degrees in STEM fields manage to succeed despite cultural and institutional barriers. Future research should explore how to modify the microculture of STEM programs and departments to allow Black students to feel that these are healthy, safe, and fair spaces in which they can make contributions. Otherwise, an invaluable diversity of perspectives may disappear altogether from academic environments. In addition, diversifying the faculty and students in doctoral engineering and computing programs could help to reduce impostor syndrome, isolation, and other damaging psychological stress. Forthcoming research, programs, and policies should consider what Black students in STEM endure, because simply surviving racially toxic environments should not be the end goal.

Background This study was motivated by the ubiquity and apparent usefulness of general epistemological development schemes, notably that of William J. Perry, Jr., in engineering education, but also by limitations that derive from their generality. Purpose/Hypothesis Empirical data were used to articulate engineering students' epistemological views on the role of mathematical methods in engineering and to explore the fit of a stage-based developmental model to those data. Design/Method Data included interviews, think-aloud protocols, and classroom observations over a one-year period. Ten undergraduates and four instructors in a civil engineering program participated. A grounded-theory approach was used to identify levels of epistemological views. Perry's scheme provided a starting framework. Skeptical reverence, the view veteran engineers hold regarding mathematics in engineering, which was previously identified by the author, was taken as a normative endpoint. All data were coded by view level and various contexts to detect students' epistemological developmental patterns. Results This article proposes three categories of engineering students' views on the role of mathematical methods in engineering: dualism, integrating, and relativism. Dualism and relativism reflect elements of Perry's general categories, but integrating, a new category, diverges significantly from Perry's middle category of multiplicity. No evidence supported a stage-based developmental model. Conclusions This empirically based scheme, while exploratory, provides further evidence that epistemological development differs across disciplines, and offers four levels of epistemological views held by engineering students on the role of mathematics in engineering. Conjectures about how to promote engineering students' epistemological development, based on classroom observations, are also offered.

PurposeThis paper aims to add to the diversity of gender and entrepreneurship studies by presenting the (lived experience) perspective on the development of research on women as entrepreneurs.Design/methodology/approachAn essay built on personal reflections on the development of the field since the 1980s.FindingsResearch on entrepreneurship has shifted toward quantitative studies and the paper format, leading to fragmented research. Research on gender shows another trend, where empirical data have become less central – “women” as individuals are to a large extent not discussed. The authors conclude that the field of gender and entrepreneurship, therefore, is a fruitful arena to perform research in as long as the physical women are not neglected.Originality/valueBuilding on the lived experience for almost 40 years as researchers of women as entrepreneurs, the perspective contributes to the understanding of the development of the field.

School violence is a global concern that calls for international research using cross context methods. Although there are several international surveys that compare school violence across countries, they do not clearly address issues of similarities and differences in relative prevalence of different types of victimization and their relations with age, sex, and cultural group. We explored these questions among Israeli-Arab (n = 13,606), Israeli-Jewish (n = 10,637), and Chilean students in poor schools in a large Chilean city (n = 4557), using the same self-report questionnaire that measures verbal-social victimization, victimization by threats, physical victimization, and sexual harassment. As hypothesized, we found similarities in the patterns of relative prevalence of victimization types, as well as study group, sex, and age main effects and interactions. These effects were evident even when the lowest third SES group in Israel was compared with the Chilean students. These findings suggest group differences in prevalence of student victimization, and at the same time cultural invariance in relative prevalence of victimization types and their relations with sex and age. We discuss the need for more international comparative research in this field that takes into account cultural values and the structure and organizations of schools within the different educational systems.

In the past decade, increasing numbers of students are taking college credit courses while still in high school, through programs such as Advanced Placement or through agreements with the local community colleges. Recognizing this trend, an Iowa State University task force researched the impact that this early college credit (ECC) was having on both the student experience and the university. The study methodology included both quantitative and qualitative analyses, using student academic records, student surveys and focus groups, faculty focus groups, and review of institutional materials. This paper disaggregates institutional findings to compare the experiences of engineering and non-engineering students. Similar to nonengineering students, engineering students with ECC had higher one-year retention rates, took fewer credits their first semester of enrollment, graduated after eight semesters of enrollment and graduated in fewer semesters overall than did engineering students without ECC. However, there were differences in the experiences between engineering students and non-engineering students. Engineering students did not see an increase in GPA or graduation rates; and, they were more likely to repeat courses taken as ECC and to have their ECC courses not count toward their degree programs. Strategies to increase the effectiveness of ECC for engineering students could include offering of key entry-level engineering courses to students in high school, a review of the engineering curriculum for sequencing and flexibility, increased attention on issues of mathematics curriculum alignment with feeder institutions, and improved communication with high school students, parents and counselors.

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution:</i> This qualitative study explores changes in engineering students’ civic engagement as they transition from high school to college and uses Social Cognitive Theory to understand factors that influence civic engagement. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</i> Engineering programs aim to graduate civically engaged engineers who serve their communities and advance public welfare. Thus, it is important to understand how engineering programs influence students’ civic engagement. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Research Question:</i> How and why do engineering students’ civic engagement change when they transition from high school into their first year of college? <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methodology:</i> Guided by Social Cognitive Theory, this study uses semi-structured interviews and an inductive thematic analysis approach to compare eleven first-year engineering students’ experiences with civic engagement before and during college. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Findings:</i> Engineering students tended to be less engaged in their communities during their first year of college compared to in high school. This decrease was largely due to having fewer supportive structures and numerous barriers to civic engagement as they acclimated to a new environment. Engineering programs can support and scaffold opportunities for engineering students to become more civically engaged.

Motivation for Critical Thinking: A Comparison of Engineering and other Faculty Undergraduate Students in Chile

Hitchhiking travel has received little interest from tourism researchers despite its association with backpacker travel and its (re)emergence as a tourism practice in recent years, especially in China. Literature suggests that gender is an important aspect of hitchhiking. The female hitchhikers, like other women travellers and tourists, are both constrained by and resistant to gender norms. However, this has seldom been examined in a critical approach. Building on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and her conception of vulnerability, this research seeks to provide a critical account of how hitchhiking travel in contemporary China is articulated and experienced in gendered and sexualised ways. Butler offers a critical account of ‘agency’ and a queer intervention in gender studies, which are valuable in addressing the agency-as-free-actions formulation and the heterosexual presumption seen in the understanding of gender in hitchhiking or tourism in general. Empirical data were collected through participant observation and interviews during an (auto)ethnographic field study undertaken on the South Sichuan – Tibet Route in China and analysed through writing as a method of inquiry – a ‘queer’ analytic method that allows the ‘crossing’ of thematic analysis, Foucauldian discourse analysis and self-narratives. The findings suggest that the ‘truth’ of hitchhiking and being a hitchhiker is produced through storytelling as a form of discursive power. Such discursive power set up the subjectivities in which the female and the male hitchhikers understand themselves as vulnerable and invulnerable respectively. The (in)vulnerability, far from being the essential features of the gendered hitchhiking subjects, is differentially distributed to the female and male hitchhikers as the consequence of certain power regimes, particularly normative heterosexuality and the principle of reciprocity. These power regimes also operate to marginalise non-heteronormative, or specifically homosexual subjects in hitchhiking travel. This research as a whole demonstrates an alternative approach to understating gender in tourism that may invoke valuable debates in tourism gender scholarship.

Recently, alternative assessment (AA) has gained huge attention in oral ‎communication studies. An area that has progressively received momentous concerns in ‎the EFL/ESL literature is the employment of the self-assessment method. Despite this concern, ‎the empirical data on the college of engineering students’ willingness to implement self-assessment, their ‎perceptions towards it, and the impact of factors on their attitudes remain scant. Therefore, in ‎an attempt to contribute to this research-based, this study tries to investigate the engineering students’ perceptions towards self-assessments on developing their ‎oral presentation skills in an engineering scope. To accomplish this aim, the study recruited ‎‎110 participants. The study delved into the engineering students’ perceptions of ‎self-assessment strategy in two stages (pre-and post-questionnaire) in performing technical oral ‎presentations. A questionnaire was distributed to the students before and after ‎implementing the assessment. The findings revealed that the students possessed positive perceptions pertaining to self-assessment in both ‎stages, pre-and post-self-assessment.

Experience of clandestine use of medical abortion among university students in Chile: a qualitative study