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This paper compares an innovative approach to teaching a required introductory C programming course to a traditional C programming course for electrical engineering (EE) students. The novel course utilizes hardware-based projects to motivate students to master language syntax and implement key programming concepts and best practices. In a mixed methods research evaluation, we compare the attitudes and self-perceptions of the students in each of the introductory courses, as well as success rates for each cohort in their subsequent intermediate programming class and progress toward their degrees. Performance and retention outcomes were similar for the two courses. After students took the novel course, they were more likely to feel that they fit in as electrical engineers and less likely to believe that programming was "not real engineering." Qualitative data and pedagogical descriptions of the two courses help connect these quantitative findings to key features of the courses.

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.

Background: Many engineering education researchers acknowledge that their positionality impacts their research. Practices for reporting positionality vary widely and rarely incorporate a nuanced discussion of the impact of demographic identities on research. Researchers holding marginalized or relatively hidden identities must navigate additional layers regarding transparency of their positionality. Purpose: We identify ways in which positionality impacts research, with a particular emphasis on demographic identity dimensions. We note that whether identities are relatively marginalized, privileged, hidden, or apparent in a research context creates complexities for conceptualizing, practicing, and disclosing one's positionality. Method: In a collaborative inquiry informed by autoethnography, we assemble positionality reflections of current engineering education researchers to demonstrate the primary ways in which positionality impacts research. Results: We find that positionality impacts six fundamental aspects of research: research topic, epistemology, ontology, methodology, relation to participants, and communication. These aspects of research delve deeper than conceptions of positionality as a methodological limitation, a measure to prevent bias, or a requirement for research quality. Conclusion: The impact of positionality on research is complex, particularly when researchers occupy minoritized identities and for research topics that interrogate power relations between identity groups. By demonstrating the practices of interrogating and representing positionality, we hope to encourage more researchers to represent positionality transparently, thus making researchers' transparency safer for all. We argue that positionality is an important tool for reflecting on and dislocating privilege, particularly when working on equity research.

Background: Quantitative researchers have noted the impact of mentoring and support programming for students from underrepresented groups in engineering. Qualitative researchers have also noted the importance of student agency in persistence through marginalization. Nevertheless, challenges and questions remain in identifying practices which are effective in supporting underrepresented students. Purpose: The study applies scholarship from critical theory and narrative as a new resource for approaching and understanding the process of supporting marginalized student agency. Method: A longitudinal interview study with a female undergraduate engineering student, Emilia, developed into a way for her to process marginalizing educational experiences and to develop new narratives that expanded her agency. After an in-depth member check, Emilia became a co-author contributing a post hoc account of the impact of these discussions. Results: Our analysis indicates that naming one's own oppression and creating narratives that repurpose and resituate stereotypical stories of oppression was a liberatory act for Emilia. We trace three marginalizing themes of the participant's experience that are subverted and resisted through the student co-constructed narrative. Conclusions: The paper builds theory for diversity support, suggesting critical theorizing may present a new form of agency not yet represented in the literature. It also points to possible value for student participants from qualitative methodologies exploring student experiences. Finally, it suggests supporting critical theorizing as a potential new orientation for diversity practitioners.

Background: To explain educational problems such as student attrition, engineering education literature often focuses on the characteristics of individuals. In 2006, Ray McDermott and Hervé Varenne called for examining the "cultural construction" of educational problems, uncovering how multiple actors create and inscribe meaning to the educational problem. Purpose: We apply the cultural construction framework to examine how the educational problem of a student being "not cut out for engineering" is constructed within the context of a specific electrical engineering course. We focus on culturally taken-for-granted course structures, practices, and interactions, all of which produce the local enactment of this common educational problem. Method: We used ethnographic methods, including field-noted participant observations, one-on-one participant interviews, and video-recorded student work on lab assignments. Coordinating multiple data streams enabled us to question explanations couched in terms of individual ability and background, and to illustrate how ability hierarchies were constructed in the educational context. Results: Our findings illustrate how several mundane and seemingly innocuous aspects of engineering classrooms add up to construct the educational problem of our focal student as "not cut out" for engineering. Contributions to this construction included lecture seating positions, interactional norms in lecture and lab, and labels made meaningful through institutional and interactional processes. Conclusions: The forces at play in constructing educational problems for students are deeply embedded in institutions, disciplines, and society, making it difficult to generate a simple list of instructional interventions. We highlight cultural construction analysis as a potentially fruitful orientation for researchers and practitioners to find the particular sites and tools for local intervention.

Kellam and Jennings's 2021 article offers a valuable reflection on the epistemological underpinnings and influences of qualitative engineering education research. They identify epistemological heterogeneity and attribute the blending of postmodern and critical with positivist aspects of research to an "epistemological unconsciousness" that is the positivistic historical bias of the field encroaching on qualitative research. As a researcher that finds myself in similar epistemological blends, I offer some alternative interpretations and two directions for alternative framing. First, I note that in the scholarship on personal epistemology a trend towards epistemological resources has helped appreciate the continuities between camps and expert/novice hierarchies. Second, I note that scholarship of pragmatism offers a way of noting the continuities between research epistemologies. I suggest that the communicative power of researcher authors to convince scholars from contrasting epistemological perspectives is an important additional aspect to enhance Kellam and Jennings's argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines specific problems of educational practice that I, an undergraduate engineering educator and education researcher, have encountered in creating an interdisciplinary engineering project course. I reveal my process of theorising about problems of practice to position engineering educators' pedagogical theorising as worthy of scholarly focus. In a reflective scholarship of teaching and learning paradigm, I take the iterative design of this course as the object of inquiry, across semesters and institutional contexts. I discuss the iteration of five key dimensions of the course: (1) authenticity to engineering professional work, (2) promoting learning of teamwork skills, (3) complexities and equity dimensions of situated project-based learning environments, (4) valuing social sciences and social context reasoning for engineers, and (5) creating a responsive curriculum for students. I distil insights related to each of these dimensions. I conclude with a consideration of the interplay between these dimensions and a reflection on the form of scholarship for engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The history of engineering education perpetuates a cultural inertia favoring dominant groups. Engineering education research on broadening participation implies a change towards a desired outcome: increased diversity, equity, and inclusion in the engineering profession. However, many research designs focus on knowledge generation without centering a process of change within research activities or collaborations. Purpose: In this theoretical article, we critically examine the current norms of qualitative research on broadening participation to center research designs that push towards change. Scope: First, we present a simple change model as a way of discussing prototypical qualitative research designs in terms of their component parts. We find that these research designs are limiting in terms of enacting significant change. Next, we point to a variety of institutional norms and values that inherently limit research innovation and impact in these contexts, including the traditional policies, practices, and values that shape our work. Lastly, we draw from experiences in our own work to introduce alternative approaches that center change for equity and inclusion within broadening participation research designs and frame this discussion using the same change model concept to highlight those features. Conclusion: In conclusion, we call for more innovation in qualitative research design and suggest some strategies for innovation that push beyond traditional approaches to instill change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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: Many engineering education researchers acknowledge that their positionality impacts their research. Practices for reporting positionality vary widely and rarely incorporate a nuanced discussion of the impact of demographic identities on research. Researchers holding marginalized or relatively hidden identities must navigate additional layers regarding transparency of their positionality. Purpose We identify ways in which positionality impacts research, with a particular emphasis on demographic identity dimensions. We note that whether identities are relatively marginalized, privileged, hidden, or apparent in a research context creates complexities for conceptualizing, practicing, and disclosing one's positionality. Method: In a collaborative inquiry informed by autoethnography, we assemble positionality reflections of current engineering education researchers to demonstrate the primary ways in which positionality impacts research. Results: We find that positionality impacts six fundamental aspects of research: research topic, epistemology, ontology, methodology, relation to participants, and communication. These aspects of research delve deeper than conceptions of positionality as a methodological limitation, a measure to prevent bias, or a requirement for research quality. Conclusion: The impact of positionality on research is complex, particularly when researchers occupy minoritized identities and for research topics that interrogate power relations between identity groups. By demonstrating the practices of interrogating and representing positionality, we hope to encourage more researchers to represent positionality transparently, thus making researchers' transparency safer for all. We argue that positionality is an important tool for reflecting on and dislocating privilege, particularly when working on equity research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper emerges out of ethnographic scholarship on marginalization in present-day engineering education. I pursue a scholarship of integration to contextualize my own and others' engineering education research with critical, cultural, and historical accounts of engineering. I structure the narrative around the ethnographic themes of masculinity, competition, and competition-as-masculinity. Within each theme I situate present-day ethnographic observations of engineering educational culture, elaborate on those observations with historical context, and return to consider how historical context extends the original ethnographic observations. The implications for the study are threefold: (1) generating a new functional lens on engineering educational culture as masculine and competitive, (2) communicating useful historical context to stakeholders in engineering education, and (3) demonstrating the value of integrative scholarship to promote further interdisciplinary collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares an innovative approach to teaching a required introductory C programming course to a traditional C programming course for electrical engineering (EE) students. The novel course utilizes hardware-based projects to motivate students to master language syntax and implement key programming concepts and best practices. In a mixed methods research evaluation, we compare the attitudes and self-perceptions of the students in each of the introductory courses, as well as success rates for each cohort in their subsequent intermediate programming class and progress toward their degrees. Performance and retention outcomes were similar for the two courses. After students took the novel course, they were more likely to feel that they fit in as electrical engineers and less likely to believe that programming was "not real engineering." Qualitative data and pedagogical descriptions of the two courses help connect these quantitative findings to key features of the courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Quantitative researchers have noted the impact of mentoring and support programming for students from underrepresented groups in engineering. Qualitative researchers have also noted the importance of student agency in persistence through marginalization. Nevertheless, challenges and questions remain in identifying practices which are effective in supporting underrepresented students. Purpose: The study applies scholarship from critical theory and narrative as a new resource for approaching and understanding the process of supporting marginalized student agency. Method: A longitudinal interview study with a female undergraduate engineering student, Emilia, developed into a way for her to process marginalizing educational experiences and to develop new narratives that expanded her agency. After an in‐depth member check, Emilia became a co‐author contributing a post hoc account of the impact of these discussions. Results: Our analysis indicates that naming one's own oppression and creating narratives that repurpose and resituate stereotypical stories of oppression was a liberatory act for Emilia. We trace three marginalizing themes of the participant's experience that are subverted and resisted through the student co‐constructed narrative. Conclusions: The paper builds theory for diversity support, suggesting critical theorizing may present a new form of agency not yet represented in the literature. It also points to possible value for student participants from qualitative methodologies exploring student experiences. Finally, it suggests supporting critical theorizing as a potential new orientation for diversity practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: To explain educational problems such as student attrition, engineering education literature often focuses on the characteristics of individuals. In 2006, Ray McDermott and Hervé Varenne called for examining the “cultural construction” of educational problems, uncovering how multiple actors create and inscribe meaning to the educational problem. Purpose: We apply the cultural construction framework to examine how the educational problem of a student being “not cut out for engineering” is constructed within the context of a specific electrical engineering course. We focus on culturally taken‐for‐granted course structures, practices, and interactions, all of which produce the local enactment of this common educational problem. Method: We used ethnographic methods, including field‐noted participant observations, one‐on‐one participant interviews, and video‐recorded student work on lab assignments. Coordinating multiple data streams enabled us to question explanations couched in terms of individual ability and background, and to illustrate how ability hierarchies were constructed in the educational context. Results: Our findings illustrate how several mundane and seemingly innocuous aspects of engineering classrooms add up to construct the educational problem of our focal student as “not cut out” for engineering. Contributions to this construction included lecture seating positions, interactional norms in lecture and lab, and labels made meaningful through institutional and interactional processes. Conclusions: The forces at play in constructing educational problems for students are deeply embedded in institutions, disciplines, and society, making it difficult to generate a simple list of instructional interventions. We highlight cultural construction analysis as a potentially fruitful orientation for researchers and practitioners to find the particular sites and tools for local intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]