A Cross-sectional Study of Engineering Identity During Undergraduate Education.

In this research paper, we explore engineering students' identity development across the four or more years of undergraduate engineering education. The focus of this work is subject-related role identities, or how students position themselves and are positioned by others as the kind of people that engage in engineering, mathematics, or physics. We collected responses from 586 engineering students at a large, public East Coast university using an electronic survey during the spring semester of 2016. Survey items were taken from previously developed instruments and included measures of students' interest in engineering, students' feeling of recognition by others as an engineer, and students' beliefs about their performance/competence in engineering. We also measured students' overall attitudes about their identities as a physics person, math person, and engineer. Student responses were compared by academic year at the university (i.e., first year, second year, third year, or fourth or more year) using ANOVA and post-hoc Tukey's HSD for significant results. Our findings illustrate differences in students' engineering performance/competence and recognition beliefs as well as differences in their engineering, mathematics, physics overall identity measures. The post-hoc Tukey's HSD tests reveal a consistent pattern of identity development with lower identification in the second year of engineering education and identification progressing to the highest levels in the fourth year. This research provides evidence that these subject-related role identity measures can be used with students across undergraduate engineering and that they can differentiate among students by year at a university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]