Engineering Education Research Community Research Articles

Uncovering Epistemologies and Values of Our Qualitative Engineering Education Research Community: Listening for Voices

<strong>Background:</strong> In engineering education research, we have made great strides in both our advanced qualitative research methodologies and the acceptance of qualitative research within the broader field. This shift in our community likely marks a shift in our epistemologies and a shift in our values, but we are still feeling a pull towards positivist epistemologies from funding agencies, journals, editorial boards, reviewers, and readers, which may be limiting our potential to conduct more critical and postmodern research and learn more about communities who are marginalized in engineering. <strong>Purpose: </strong>The purpose of this research project is to develop an understanding of qualitative researchers’ epistemological perspectives and values. The research question guiding this study is: Through an analysis of qualitative engineering education manuscripts published in 2019, what voices of researchers and participants appear in our work and what do they reveal about our EER community’s epistemologies and values? <strong>Method:</strong> The databases Engineering Village and Google Scholar were employed to identify journal articles that are qualitative, engineering education–focused, and published in 2019. This search resulted in 27 journal articles from eleven journals that served as the data for this project. The analysis was derived from discourse analysis and The Listening Guide and involved multiple readings. During these readings, we considered how the epistemologies present in qualitative engineering education research were reflected through a discursive examination of voices that emerged in the papers. <strong>Conclusions: </strong>Researcher and participant voices emerged in the analysis, including some that are more aligned with positivist epistemologies (e.g., apologetic, generalizable, and abstracted voices) and others that are aligned with more postmodern epistemologies (e.g., alongside, vulnerable, and storied voices). These voices provide some insight into epistemological and paradigmatic tensions within our qualitative engineering education research community.

Contextualizing the Past to Guide the Future: Situating Three Critical Theoretical Frameworks for Educational Culture

Background: The engineering education research community has increasingly acknowledged the importance of addressing equity and inclusion. Qualitative research approaches have a unique power to reform classroom practice, create empathy for students, understand context, and point towards new paradigms and solutions. In our work, we have found critical social theories provide useful ways of looking at, critiquing, and reimagining inequitable educational settings. However, many scholars theory in a limited way with theory, treating it as a utilitarian choice rather than requiring deep engagement. Without careful consideration of the situated historical context for a theory’s origin, we can distort its original purpose. Purpose: This paper highlights funds of knowledge, cultural production, and cultural construction as three prominent theoretical frameworks for educational culture. Following the methodological approach of historicizing, we recontextualize the present use of the theoretical frameworks by better understanding their historical context. Scope: We introduce each of the three frameworks and present an account of the history of the origins of the frameworks, emphasizing the context within which the originators found themselves and what problems they saw themselves as addressing. Next, we discuss how it is currently being leveraged in US engineering education or related fields, noting perceived problems or patterns related to the application of theory. Finally, we consider the differences between the past and the present contexts to help guide future use of the framework, noting what lessons we can take away from the past that speak to issues in the present. Conclusion: We compare the nuanced differences between the frameworks and call on readers to make a more careful and less casual choice regarding theory. We also note the importance of considering historicity, situatedness, and reflexivity when deeply engaging with research on educational culture and critical theoretical approaches.

Coupling Methodological Commitments to Make Sense of Socio-Psychological Experience

<strong>Background: </strong>The engineering education research community has embraced a diverse range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research approaches. In line with the pragmatic roots of both engineering practice and education, we concur with past scholars that no particular method is better than any other. Rather, the method should be determined by the nature of the research object or the social reality of interest. <strong>Purpose/Hypothesis: </strong>The purpose of this article is to discuss investigations of complex phenomena that have both individual and socially constructed features by using a mixed qualitative methods approach. Our discussion focuses on how to honor, maintain, and leverage the methodological commitments of multiple approaches to achieve a coherent understanding of the social reality under investigation. <strong>Design/Method:</strong> We introduce a method to map a social system of interest and define the scope and nature of a specific and researchable social reality within that social system. We specifically draw on an example of our study of professional shame in engineering contexts, describing how articulating this social reality enabled us to select two qualitative approaches, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and ethnographic focus groups, to thoroughly examine the phenomenon. <strong>Results:</strong> Drawing on data from a larger study, we demonstrate how the two methodologies allowed us to see different features of professional shame. IPA provided a lens into students’ intrapsychic experiences of shame, while the ethnographic lens provided a window into the social construction and maintenance of the norms, expectations, and master narratives that can provoke shame experiences in individual students. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> We found that combining multiple qualitative methods, based on an explicit and shared definition of the social reality under investigation, afforded a coherent, empirical understanding of a complex social reality that one method alone could not have provided. Although mixing qualitative methods does demand a cogent way of managing multiple methodological mindsets, the whole outcome of both approaches was greater than the sum of the individual parts. We encourage other engineering education researchers to similarly consider the use of mixed qualitative methods when investigating complex socio-psychological phenomena.

Faculty subcultures in engineering and their implications for organizational change

AbstractBackgroundPrior efforts to understand faculty culture have largely described monoliths where individuals are differentiated by their productivity. Little prior work provides rich faculty subcultural descriptions and their connections to specific activities, including disposition to change.Purpose/HypothesisThis article describes the goals, assumptions, methods, and inferences made about faculty culture within an engineering department at a large university with very high research activity, with the potential to enrich future discussions about change among the target audience of engineering faculty, administrators, and researchers.Design/MethodWe employ cultural consensus theory (CCT) to characterize faculty culture, based upon a detailed survey, analysis, and member checking. We use the academic ratchet—as a theoretical framework to interpret CCT results, and extend our understanding using previously published change theories.ResultsWe discovered two faculty subcultures of roughly equal membership: (a) change‐oriented and (b) continuity‐embracing. Members of each subculture agree on the primacy of research but differ in their views of change, leadership, and trust. Members of the change‐oriented subculture seek large‐scale changes but feel disempowered to pursue them, while members of the continuity‐embracing subculture seek modest changes and feel empowered to enact them.ConclusionsWe introduce a scalable, person‐centered culture characterization approach (CCT) to the engineering education research community. This approach deepens our understanding of faculty culture, and our results reinforce the central role of the academic ratchet in shaping faculty activities. This analysis illustrates the potential roles of each subculture in enacting change of various types and magnitudes.

Scaffolding strategies in a rubric-based intervention to promote engineering students’ ability to address wicked problems

ABSTRACTIn recent years, there has been increasing interest within the engineering education research community to prepare engineering students to address wicked problems (WPs) such as climate change, resource scarcity and violent conflict. Previous research suggests that engineering students are able to address WPs if they are given adequate support, but there is a lack of research on what kinds of support are needed. This paper aims to reduce this gap by reporting on students’ performance in, and approaches to, addressing WPs when different scaffolding strategies were used in different parts of a rubric-based intervention. The intervention aimed to provide undergraduate engineering students with an understanding of the nature of WPs and with a structured way of addressing them. For each part of the intervention, we discuss affordances for learning provided by the different scaffolding strategies. The results suggest that strong cognitive scaffolding can support students’ understanding of the nature of WPs and students’ performance in written responses to WPs, but possibly also limits deep engagement with WPs and transfer of learning to other contexts.

Not so global: a bibliometric look at engineering education research

ABSTRACTIt has been suggested that Engineering Education Research (EER) is going global. If this were the case we would assume that the research of EER scholars in different parts of the globe would be informed by literature describing prior work within and beyond their home country/region. The authors set out to test this hypothesis by applying citation analysis to research presented in four publication venues: the annual conferences organised by ASEE (American Society of Engineering Education) and SEFI (European Society of Engineering Education) and two archival journals published by these two societies: Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) and European Journal of Engineering Education (EJEE). Our findings from the analysis of 4321 publications show that citations in ASEE conferences are dominated by sources with US affiliations, whereas the SEFI data show that while US sources are frequently cited, European and other authors are also well represented. With regard to the journals JEE and EJEE, a similar pattern is observed. These results suggest that, in citation terms, European EER is relatively global but US EER is not. The authors conclude by suggesting that if the EER community is to aspire to quality scholarship, there needs to be debate around how such issues can be tackled.

Anatomy of Scholarly Collaboration in Engineering Education: A Big‐Data Bibliometric Analysis

AbstractBackgroundEngineering education has become a large community with an increasing number of scholars and publications. As the number of publications has grown, it has become increasingly difficult to understand the epistemic nature and diffusion characteristics of knowledge generated by this community. Techniques to study community topology require nontrivial computational workflows.Purpose/HypothesisThe present study characterizes the topology of scholarly collaboration and important factors affecting this topology in engineering education research.Design/MethodsA bibliometric analysis was conducted of 24,172 papers in engineering education research journals and conference proceedings for the years 2000–2011. A total of 29,116 unique authors are present. Social network analyses were used to characterize the network topology of overall scientific collaboration. Analyses based on grouping scholars by disciplinary backgrounds, research areas, and geographical locations were performed.ResultsThe results show that the engineering education research community is in its early stage of forming a small‐world network that relies primarily on 5% of scholars to build capacity. Typical small‐world networks provide some very clear characterizations about the state, stability, and growth of the community. Deviations from this ideal model suggest the need for rethinking collaboration in engineering education. Scholars with interdisciplinary backgrounds play a critical role in bridging isolated research teams.ConclusionsCompared with other disciplines and the ideal small‐world network model, the topology of collaboration in engineering education shows significant barriers to the fast diffusion of innovations. This study demonstrates the value of big‐data bibliometrics in understanding scholarly collaboration within a research community.

Engineering Education Research and Development at Queen’s University

Research and development in engineering education has been prominent at Queen’s University since the early 1990’s. Initially focused on evolving improved methods to encompass theoretical, practical, industrial, and multidisciplinary aspects into undergraduate engineering programs, the outcome of those early endeavours became what is now known as “Integrated Learning” at Queen’s. This effort also recognized the need for a new and different facility to accommodate evolving pedagogical approaches and enhanced team-based activities, and in 2005, the 6,000 m2 Integrated Learning Centre was opened. Both the Integrated Learning philosophy and the corresponding facility have been a tremendous success. With the establishment of Integrated Learning , engineering education research began to expand both in breadth and depth. Research studies and publications have included topics such as optimized assessment of both students and pedagogical activities, understanding student attitudes towards learning, evaluating engineering practitioners’ needs and expectations of engineering graduates, defining needs for outreach activities, developing and assessing measurements for graduate attributes, and using web-based classroom response systems for quality student feedback. Graduate students have been engaged in engineering education research topics for nearly a decade, with the first Master’s student with a full- fledged engineering education research topic graduating in 2006, and the first post-doctoral researcher hired in 2011. Additional graduate students have been engaged in engineering education research since, producing four more Master’s graduates to date, and two more in process. The outcomes from this research, combined with collaborative efforts across the faculty, have resulted in new and innovative pedagogy, including the Multidisciplinary Design Stream and the recently introduced Engineering Design &amp; Professional Practice sequence. Both of these programs include a combination of proven and innovative pedagogy, and through multiple assessment techniques, themselves become the subject of ongoing research and development. Further research studies are underway. One is exploring how critical thinking develops in first year engineering, and whether the use of complex authentic engineering problems assists in developing critical thinking. Queen’s is also part of a learning outcomes consortium project with Toronto, Guelph, and University of Kansas, and three Ontario colleges, to develop procedures for assessing learning outcomes at an institutional level. In addition, Queen’s is part of a collaboration with 7 Canadian and US schools on research into sustaining change in institutions and influencing adoption of evidence-based practices. The panel presentation will provide more detail on our past, present, and future research in this field. The engineering education research community in Canada is dynamic but under-represented, and it is hoped that this session will encourage more engineering academics to venture into this field.

Guest Editorial Continuing to Build Engineering Education Research Capabilities

The engineering education research community has progressed considerably since the first Frontiers in Education (FIE) conference. The FIE conference was started by the IEEE Education Society in 1971. The FIE conference has helped engineering faculty become more scholarly teachers. Becoming a scholarly teacher means being familiar with the best practices in engineering education, reading engineering education literature and engaging in periodic conversations about teaching and learning with colleagues, and conducting systematic assessment of their students' learning. The IEEE Education Society has provided extraordinary leadership in engineering education and is now well positioned to play a significant role in preparing engineering education researchers. In January 2003, the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) repositioned itself as an archival journal for scholarly research in engineering education.