The role of collaborative inquiry in transforming faculty perspectives on use of reflection in engineering education

Abstract

During the 2014–2015 academic year, engineering faculty members and students at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) met monthly in a collaborative inquiry dialogue group to discuss the role of reflection in transforming engineering education. This project is part of the larger Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education (CPREE) headed by the University of Washington. In this paper we describe the activities of the Cal Poly group involved with CPREE and how these activities have transformed the thinking and actions of participants. Collaborative inquiry dialogue involves self-organizing individuals into a small group to address a compelling question through repeated cycles of experimentation and reflection on the results of that experimentation. In this context, the faculty members involved (including the authors of this paper) have been meeting to discuss how use of reflection in the classroom and/or in a collaborative inquiry dialogue amongst colleagues might lead to transformation in engineering education practice and outcomes. The dialogue group serves as a safe container that allows for the possibility of transformational insights by participants — insights that change their view of themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. Using a qualitative self-report methodology in the tradition of an action research paradigm, we (the authors) reflected on what we believed we had gained from the collaborative inquiry dialogues. Broadly we have noticed that participation in the collaborative inquiry dialogue has led us to reconsider what reflection is and what it could be, to develop a greater appreciation for the role of reflective practices in engineering education, and to better recognize when reflection is occurring (and when it might not be) such that reflective behaviors can be encouraged and practiced. We also began to challenge assumptions we had made about our teaching practices and have noted that the collaborative inquiry provides an environment in which development of new thinking is possible.