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Learning assistants (LAs) are peer educators who work alongside faculty to facilitate active learning activities and help students develop conceptual understanding. LAs and LA training programs are becoming increasingly prevalent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) gateway courses in the United States, and research continues to document the positive impacts on students and LAs in LA-facilitated classrooms. While evidence accumulates regarding positive student impact, relatively less work has investigated the ways LAs themselves might also be impacted by their participation in these programs. To improve LA training and student learning in STEM, it is vital that educators better understand the ways the experiences of LAs can promote personal and professional growth as members of the STEM community. To address this gap, we explored the epistemological development of LAs who participated in an LA program (i.e., pedagogy training and classroom practice) at a large, public, teaching-focused university. LAs participated in semi-structured interviews at the beginning and end of the academic term and completed bi-weekly reflections where they described impactful events and challenges. Using qualitative coding, we operationalized Baxter Magolda's epistemological reflection model to identify the impactful experiences that provoke epistemological development or reorientation. Our findings highlight three impactful experiences that help promote epistemological development for LAs: (i) recognizing the importance of language and listening; (ii) observing more knowledgeable others struggle with content; and (iii) providing students with the "wrong" answer to a question. We argue that these experiences can promote epistemological development in ways that help LAs become more effective in facilitating student learning and, ultimately, more thoughtful members of STEM disciplines. By working to create spaces for LAs to have these impactful experiences in training and preparation, educators can promote epistemological growth in ways that benefit both LAs and the students they serve.

Background: Conceptual understanding is critical to both engineering education and practice. In fact, many undergraduate courses focus on developing students' knowledge and understanding of core engineering concepts. At the same time, a growing body of literature points to substantial gaps across educational and professional practice contexts, including how problems are embodied and solved. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore potential differences in conceptual understanding across engineering students and professional engineers. To do so, we compared the responses of civil engineering practitioners to the Statics Concept Inventory (SCI) to those of engineering students enrolled in statics courses. Design/Method: We administered the SCI to 95 practicing civil engineers and compared their responses to an existing dataset from 1,372 engineering students. We conducted three comparisons: overall SCI score, concept subscores, and item-by-item. Results: Students generally outperformed engineers on the SCI in terms of overall performance. However, on closer inspection, students' superior performance appears to be driven by differences in knowledge or understanding of specific statics concepts rather than a stronger understanding in general. Conclusions: We caution against interpretations that imply students have a better understanding of statics concepts. Instead, our results suggest that differences in the way concepts are situated and applied across school and workplace contexts might account for the differences in the performance observed. These findings raise critical questions regarding the nature of concepts and the immutability of common academic representations, and point to the need for further qualitative and exploratory work investigating concepts in practice.

Background: Conceptual change is a process in which an individual's understanding and the basis of this understanding change over time. Vosniadou's framework theory explains conceptual change in terms of how students learn to relate the observable and unobservable in everyday phenomena. As a result, courses that relate physical phenomena to complex abstractions -- such as Mechanics of Materials -- are useful spaces for exploring conceptual change. Purpose: This paper leverages Vosniadou's framework theory of conceptual change to explore students' reasoning and to identify trends about their understanding of fundamental concepts of mechanics of materials. Design/Method: This research is based on the qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with ninety engineering undergraduate students enrolled in a Mechanics of Materials course. Interviews were qualitatively analyzed to capture students' understanding of mechanics of materials concepts under different loading scenarios. Results: Our results found two common persistent beliefs in student reasoning in both the axial and bending load cases: that shear and normal stress depend on (a) the direction and (b) the location of an applied load. We propose that students' "nonscientific" beliefs are part of an intermediate, synthetic model of conceptual understanding created as students assimilate their presuppositions of mechanics of materials with newly acquired information based on the scientific concepts. Conclusions: Students form naïve conceptual beliefs based on their experiences with loading scenarios that impede their abilities to more effectively assimilate new concepts into their current framework theories. A better understanding of student reasoning and what influences it can inform instructional techniques to help students develop science-based reasoning in mechanics of materials.

While engineering education researchers have developed research-based instructional strategies (RBISs) to assist faculty in their teaching effectiveness and thereby student learning, uptake o f these strategies remains challenging due to a wide range o f faculty concerns. One established way to address such concerns is to involve them in the research and development process. In this study, we developed a tool to measure in-class cognitive engagement, an attribute m ost faculty recognize as crucial to student learning and used sensemaking as a framework to interpret faculty feedback on the survey's development. This tool, the In-Class Cognitive Engagement (ICCE) survey, was presented to faculty in an interview setting where they discussed and projected student interpretations and responses to survey items. We applied a sensemaking framework to the interview analysis to explore the ways participants might adjust or ad ap t to a new way o f interacting with the world. In this case, the new interaction was the introduction o f a cognitive assessment--the ICCE survey- into their classroom. We present findings th a t demonstrate the utility o f sensemaking core properties to understand how faculty come to conclusions ab ou t the usefulness o f the ICCE survey in their classroom. Implications o f these findings include continued work directly with faculty to provide them with appropriate contextualization o f RBISrelated instruments and broader use o f technology (such as dashboard) to synthesize results to provide both timely and meaningful feedback to faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faculty development programs often operate as platforms for disseminating pedagogical innovations amongst engineering faculty, but adoption o f these innovations into engineering classrooms has been less than desirable. Such issues o f low adoption are partially due to the limited opportunity faculty have to pull innovation development towards their unique instructional contexts. However, little research to date has focused on understanding how engineering faculty would interpret such an opportunity to pull innovation development with their own curriculum in mind. The purpose o f this study is to investigate a faculty development program wherein engineering faculty collaboratively developed curricular innovations for their mechanics o f materials classroom with guidance from research on common student misconceptions. To explore the co-development o f innovations, we conducted multiple interviews with the engineering faculty participants throughout the academic year. Participants interpreted this program and their co-developed curricular innovations as providing them with resources they needed to make curricular changes. Findings also demonstrated th a t faculty adoption o f curricular innovations is highly influenced by context. By allowing faculty a greater role in the innovation development process, these contextual issues are more readily addressed. This study provides rich and detailed insight into how certain faculty approach adoption within their own contexts, which can improve faculty development and dissemination of pedagogical innovations in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capstone design courses are pivotal in engineering curricula, and understanding and assessing the resultant learning is critical to both researchers and practitioners. While current scholarship does provide tools for such assessments, most are based on outcomes derived through research with faculty, administrators, and various industry stakeholders. As a result, students' self-reported learning gains have been largely overlooked. Addressing this gap, this paper presents a qualitative thematic analysis that explores student perceptions of capstone learning. Drawing on 50 semi-structured interviews with 31 students from three different institutions, we describe four emergent themes: (1) Engineering Design Skills; (2) Teamwork and Communication; (3) Self-directed Learning Skills; and (4) Development of an Engineering Identity. These themes are generally consistent with current outcomes identified from other sources, but students' discussions also highlight areas of personal development that move beyond acquisition of technical and professional skills. That is, students' perceptions of their own learning in capstone reflect not only those outcomes currently desired by various stakeholders and accreditation bodies, but also outcomes that might be more subtle and less tangible than those demonstrated via traditional assessment approaches. Thus, we argue that in order to more meaningfully support student growth, both technical and professional, capstone faculty should incorporate opportunities to actively promote and provide evidence for the kinds of critical reflection that students engage in throughout the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]