Collaborative Research: EAGER: Understanding the Confluence: Social Identities in Engineering Education and Practice

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

Exploring social and cultural identities of engineering students and the ways these identities affect students' progression towards engineering practice Engineering education and practice continues to lack significant representation and inclusion of women, Latinos/Latinas, African Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians, and persons with disabilities, among others. It is clear that new educational strategies need to be developed and implemented in order to diversify the engineering profession. This project takes a fresh approach in an effort to demonstrate the role students' individual identities (i.e., intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, ability, sexual identity, language, etc.) play in helping or hindering success in undergraduate engineering and computer science programs. The project's results should reveal tangible, practical themes which point to why some students pursue, persist, and retain in the engineering profession while others do not. Research findings will provide a foundation for future work focused on the identification, design, and implementation of curricular and programmatic transformation in engineering and computer science, towards the end of creating equitable, just educational environments that intentionally recognize the various aspects of students' identities, recognize the importance of social, economic and political power and its differential, stratifying impact on lived experiences, and affirm students across their differences. It is hypothesized that students who identify along social categories that are centered in US culture (e.g., white, able bodied, heterosexual, male, Christian, socioeconomic affluence) will have a higher sense of belonging and self-efficacy as they progress through their undergraduate engineering programs, relative to those who identify with other groups. Both sense of belonging and self-efficacy have been shown to be positively correlated to retention and to professional identity formation. Because relational and structural power accrues to those who most closely approximate the mythical norm, those who do not align with these social categories may be compelled to assimilate or to withhold or even deny integral parts of their social and cultural identities as a means to successfully navigate engineering culture. This is referred to as "identity severance" and it is hypothesized that it is negatively correlated to persistence in engineering education and practice. Achieving the above stated goal will require that we investigate both student and faculty perceptions of intersecting social identities and their confluence with engineering culture. A mixed methods approach will be used, combining both qualitative and quantitative techniques in order to provide a more holistic understanding. By the end of the grant, the following objectives will be met: (i) ascertain themes of identity severance among engineering and computer science students from marginalized communities that have the potential to affect the path towards becoming situated within the engineering profession; and, (ii) identify the role faculty's understanding of relational and structural power across difference plays in helping or hindering students from marginalized groups successfully navigate the path towards becoming situated within the engineering profession. This project will be implemented collaboratively across three very distinct institutions -- Kapiolani Community College (a two-year tribal college), Oregon State University (a Research I institution), and The University of Texas-Pan American (a Hispanic Serving Institution). The three serve significantly different student populations and regions, but most likely share manifestations of identity severance that influence the success and persistence of engineering and computer science students.