Abstract
The purpose of this exploratory special issue study was to understand the hidden curriculum (HC), or the unwritten, unofficial, or unintended lessons, around the professionalization of engineering faculty across institutions of higher education. Additionally, how engineering faculty connected the role of HC awareness, emotions, self-efficacy, and self-advocacy concepts was studied. A mixed-method survey was disseminated to 55 engineering faculties across 54 institutions of higher education in the United States. Quantitative questions, which centered around the influences that gender, race, faculty rank, and institutional type played in participants’ responses was analyzed using a combination of decision tree analysis with chi-square and correlational analysis. Qualitative questions were analyzed by a combination of tone-, open-, and focused-coding. The findings pointed to the primary roles that gender and institutional type (e.g., Tier 1) played in issues of fulfilling the professional expectations of the field. Furthermore, it was found that HC awareness and emotions and HC awareness and self-efficacy had moderate positive correlations, whereas, compared to self-advocacy, it had weak, negative correlations. Together, the findings point to the complex understandings and intersectional lived realities of many engineering faculty and hopes that through its findings can create awareness of the challenges and obstacles present in these professional environments.
Highlights
The goal of this research is to explore how engineering faculty understand hidden curriculum (HC) in higher education settings and their overall reactions and responses to the prevalence of HC in engineering
Of the influence for the third HC statement (“Engineering education is harder, more time-consuming, and expensive because it has a direct impact on safety”) presented predominant influences from participants who self-identified as male
Among the statements that faculty regarded as not being hidden curriculum were HC #2 (“The ultimate goal of an engineering degree is to get a well-paying job”), HC #3 (“Engineering education is harder, more time-consuming, and expensive because it has a direct impact on safety”), and HC #5 (“To belong to the engineering community, your personality must fit in with everyone else’s”)
Summary
The goal of this research is to explore how engineering faculty understand hidden curriculum (HC) in higher education settings and their overall reactions and responses to the prevalence of HC in engineering. This study was conducted to help shed light on the lived realities of engineering faculties across several institutional types and is intended for different administrative entities, faculty, and students in Colleges of Engineering, in order to create awareness of the challenges and obstacles that many engineering faculty face. It is the hope of the authors that those who read this manuscript can be.
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