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Background: Shame is a deeply painful emotion people feel when they perceive that they have fallen short of socially constructed expectations. In this study, professional shame refers to shame experiences that stem from people's perceptions that they have failed to meet expectations or standards that are relevant to their identities in a professional domain. While socially constructed expectations placed on engineering students have been implicitly addressed in the engineering education literature, they have rarely been the subject of specific inquiry. Purpose: As part of a broader study on professional shame in engineering, we investigated the co‐construction of social worlds that place expectations on engineering students. Method: We conducted 10 ethnographic focus groups with undergraduate engineering students from two universities. These groups were either heterogeneous or homogeneous, regarding racial and gender identity, to examine multiple social realities. Results: We present significant findings related to engineering students' collective noticing, defining, and experiencing of social worlds. The findings give a sense of overlapping but distinct social realities among student groups and highlight how failing to meet expectations can contribute to deeply painful emotional responses. We also note when students' responses reproduce, resist, or redefine the broader cultural norms in which the students are embedded. Conclusions: The study has implications for the theoretical exploration of shame, engineering education research on identity and diversity and inclusion, and the messaging and interactions in which the engineering education community engages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although prior research has provided robust descriptions of engineering students' identity development, a gap in the literature exists related to students' emotional experiences of shame, which undergird the socially constructed expectations of their professional formation. Purpose We examined the lived experiences of professional shame among White male engineering students in the United States. We conceptualize professional shame to be a painful emotional state that occurs when one perceives they have failed to meet socially constructed expectations or standards that are relevant to their identity in a professional domain. Method: We conducted unstructured interviews with nine White male engineering students from both a research‐focused institution and a teaching‐focused institution. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis to examine the interview transcripts. Results: The findings demonstrated four themes related to how participants experienced professional shame. First, they negotiated their global, or holistic, identities in the engineering domain. Second, they experienced threats to their identities within professional contexts. Third, participants responded to threats in ways that gave prominence to the standards they perceived themselves to have failed. Finally, they repaired their identities through reframing shame experiences and seeking social connection. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that the professional shame phenomenon is interwoven with professional identity development. In experiencing professional shame, White male students might reproduce the shame experience for themselves and others. This finding has important implications for the standards against which members from underrepresented groups may compare themselves and provides insight into the social construction of engineering cultures by dominant groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Social identity theory has been used to understand student and professional engagement in engineering. Engineering identity development, however, can be disrupted by the barriers and challenges associated with the racialized and gendered perceptions of engineering. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study examined the engineering identity development and resilience of Black women engineers in industry through the exploration of their experiences in the engineering workplace. Many studies document challenges that underrepresented groups face in engineering. This work, instead, focuses on particular supports and empowerment that enabled continued participation in the engineering workforce over time. Design/Method: This interpretative phenomenological analysis consisted of nine self‐identified Black women engineers currently employed in engineering industry with at least 10 years of work experience and explored the background, pathway into and through engineering, and what it means to be an engineer through 90‐min interviews with each participant. Results: The results of this study suggest that engineering identity development alone does not contribute to the retention of Black women in the engineering workplace but instead the confluence of race, gender, and role identity that aids in developing a resilient engineering identity. Conclusions: The formal, informal, and structural educational experiences of Black women engineers are critical to the development of a resilient engineering identity. This identity is dependent on the complexities associated with being Black, a woman, and an engineer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosophical foundations of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA)—phenomenology, hermeneutics, and idiography—guide its practice and use. However, this foundation is often at odds with cultural practices of disciplines that value post-positivist perspectives emphasizing that reality can be objectively known. The conflict between the philosophical underpinnings of the methodology and the cultural practices of particular disciplines can serve to limit the use and acceptance of IPA. This article highlights ways researchers can use IPA even when the underlying tenets of that methodological approach may be in conflict with disciplinary norms. As such, we have set out to explore the tensions that accompany the choice to use IPA in the context of engineering education research within the United States. As a group of engineering education researchers, we drew upon collaborative inquiry to systematically examine our use of IPA. Our exploration of using IPA, as connected to everyday practice in a discipline that takes a postpositivist stance toward knowledge generation, provides examples for the use of IPA in tension with these disciplinary norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ASCE Body of Knowledge and the ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission have emphasized a broad set of competencies required by 21st century civil engineers. In addition to competencies that are traditionally technical, these organizations recognize that professional competencies such as leadership, the ability to design sustainable systems, effective communication, and interdisciplinary teamwork are among the many skills required by engineers of the future. To develop and enhance all of these proficiencies within the undergraduate curriculum, there is a need to take an approach that interconnects all of these outcomes throughout the curriculum, or a "networked" approach. This paper discusses service learning as a potential approach for facilitating the broad set of foundational, technical, and professional learning outcomes cited by ASCE and ABET, by investigating two case studies within the Engineering Projects in Community Service program at Purdue University. The case studies are two service-learning projects from one large, multidisciplinary, vertically integrated student design team. One project focuses on sustainable and energy efficient housing for Habitat for Humanity (HFH) in Indiana, whereas the other project focuses on affordable houses for HFH in Haiti. The current analysis of these cases suggest that service-learning projects can provide a unique learning experience for the students to develop and synthesize the broad set of foundational, technical, and professional skills by integrating learning outcomes [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Service-learning programs that emphasize engineering design have been posited to bolster the professional preparedness of engineering alumni. However, we know little about how such programs actually prepare engineers for the workplace. Nor does prior literature fully explain how characteristics of these programs affect professional preparation. Purpose This study investigates how alumni perceive the impact of one service-learning program, Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS), in preparing them for the workplace. We seek to provide empirical and theoretical foundations about how this program affected the alumni's perceptions of how they were prepared for professional practice. Design/Method This investigation was an embedded, sequential mixed-methods study, which began by administering a survey to 523 participants. On the basis of survey responses, we interviewed 27 participants and conducted a thematic analysis of transcripts to describe how participants related their EPICS experiences to the workplace. Results The findings describe how alumni perceived the role of EPICS in preparing them for the workplace. The thematic analysis reveals how alumni perceived the nature of their preparation through three themes: EPICS was a bridge from education to practice, EPICS provided a means for gaining workplace experience, and EPICS developed a variety of professional skills. Conclusions Grounded in alumni perspectives, this study demonstrates a strong link between participating in service-learning activities and navigating the complexity of the workplace. Finally, we identify three key characteristics of EPICS that are transferable to other institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students in global service-learning and similar programs frequently encounter substantial social, cultural, political, and ethical differences when working with project partners in different countries and regions. Neglecting such differences can lead to project failures and/or disempowered communities. In response to these challenges, educational resources have been developed to teach students to think about how the people, social structures, and other contextual factors associated with projects can affect, and be affected by, students' designs. Yet, there remains a scarcity of valid and reliable instruments to evaluate the effectiveness of such interventions. The purpose of this study is create a theoretically and empirically grounded instrument, the Energy Conversion Playground (ECP) design task, that is able to provide a meaningful and robust assessment of an individual's ability to identify salient technical and non-technical considerations when approaching an engineering design task situated in a developing country context. We present the scenario and an accompanying rubric that was first developed inductively from student responses to the scenario (specifically 449 discrete items from 93 ECP design tasks submitted by students who attended a Global Engineering Design Symposium). Further development of the rubric involved deductive grounding in relevant literature. To demonstrate the sensitivity of ECP design task to changes in students' thinking, we also performed comparative analysis of responses from a subset of the students (n=37) who completed the same instrument both before and after participating in the GEDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]