The gender gap in engineering presents a critical barrier to achieving a diverse and innovative engineering workforce. This gap is influenced by gender stereotypes, socialization processes, masculine culture, and insufficient early experiences with engineering. These contribute to diminished STEM self-concept, interest, and participation among women.
This study assessed an engineering outreach program's impact on children's understanding of and interest in engineering and beliefs about who can be an engineer. It compared whether discussions of gender bias differentially influenced these outcomes for girls and boys.
The study was a short-term sequential quasi-experimental design with boys and girls in grades 4–5. Six classroom groups attended a half-day engineering field trip and were randomly assigned to two conditions: Gender Presentation or No Gender Presentation. Pre- and post-program surveys measured changes in understanding of and interest in engineering and beliefs about who can be an engineer.
All children, regardless of gender or condition, had higher understanding of and interest in engineering after the program, but also demonstrated a bias in selecting men over women as engineers. Participants reported that both girls and boys like and are good at engineering and these ratings increased from the pre-program to the post-program survey.
This research affirms the effectiveness of immersive and inclusive programming in enhancing children's understanding of and interest in engineering. No substantial gender-specific differences emerged regarding the impact of discussions on gender biases. The program underscores the value of early inclusive educational interventions in fostering equitable interest in engineering among young students.
Tests are commonly and heavily used in fundamental engineering courses (FECs) to assess student learning of concepts. With existing literature presenting mixed benefits and disadvantages of testing to students' motivation to learn and documenting widely alternative assessments, the lack of questioning of heavy and common test usage must be addressed to diversify classroom assessment and promote intentionality in test usage.
This study begins to address the lack of questioning by exploring and uncovering test usage beliefs and behaviors of seven FEC instructors from two engineering departments in a land-grant, public, Research 1 university
Grounded in the Situated Expectancy–Value Theory (SEVT), we conducted a multicase study. Data include two interviews, course syllabi, and sample tests provided by the participants, and public documents from the institution and departments. We conducted a priori and emergent coding and thematic analysis to identify the beliefs and behaviors before developing individual case summaries for cross-case analysis to identify groupings.
Three test usage groups emerged: enthusiastic, default, and questioning. All test usage groups featured tests heavily in their FECs, resulting in varying alignment between these participants' test usage beliefs and behaviors.
Our findings reveal the various factors that can shape FEC instructors' test usage beliefs and behaviors, and the complexity in terms of alignment. This work lays important implications, including laying the foundations for future scholarship on testing in engineering education research and leveraging findings to begin efforts in diversifying assessment approaches and promoting intentional test usage in FECs.
Latinos/as/xs continue to face many barriers as they pursue engineering degrees, including remedial placement, lack of access to well-funded schools, and high poverty rates. We use the concept of arrebatos to describe the internal reckoning that Latino/a/x engineering students experience through their journeys, particularly focusing on the impact of socioeconomic inequalities.
To bring counternarratives in engineering education research focusing on the experiences and lived realities of low-income Latino/a/x engineering students. These counternarratives are an important step in interrogating systemic biases and exclusionary cultures, practices, and policies at HSIs and emerging HSIs and within engineering programs.
Pláticas were conducted with 22 Latino/a/x engineering undergraduates from four different universities in the US Southwest. These pláticas were coded and analyzed drawing from Anzaldúa's theoretical concept of el arrebato. Special attention was given to participants' arrebatos triggered by their college experiences as low-income individuals.
Analysis indicates that Latino/a/x engineering students' arrebatos arise from events that shake up the foundation of their own identity, including an institutional lack of sociopolitical consciousness. This lack of consciousness becomes evident not only in individuals' attitudes toward these students but also in institutional policies that put them at a further disadvantage.
Findings have implications for engineering programs, particularly at HSIs and emerging HSIs regarding the creation of policies and practices that aim to secure the retention of low-income Latino/a/x engineering students and alleviate the systemic barrier they face by affirming the practice of servingness.
The Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) publishes outstanding contributions that span a wide variety of topics and methods (Katz et al., 2023). As we laid out in the journal's strategic plan (Main & Knight, 2023), JEE is more than a place to publish papers—it is a vital partner in the global community of stakeholders dedicated to advancing research in engineering education from pre-college contexts to post-graduate professional contexts. We appreciate that authors from around the globe choose to share their work in JEE and keep it a top destination for high-quality engineering education research.
William Elgin Wickenden Award (2023)
All articles in a volume are automatically considered for the award.
Congratulations to Brooke Coley and Katreena Thomas for their article “‘The lab isn't life’: Black engineering graduate students reprioritize values at the intersection of two pandemics,” which was published in the April 2023 issue (https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20518) (Coley & Thomas, 2023). The article has been selected to receive the 2023 William Elgin Wickenden Award!
Many thanks to Senior Associate Editor Bill Williams and Deputy Editor Adam Carberry for co-chairing the selection process and the Wickenden Award committee members Jiabin Zhu, Stephen Secules, Alex Mejia, Brian McSkimming, and Madeline Polmear. We also appreciate the entire JEE editorial board for participating in this challenging task of identifying one paper to recognize out of an entire volume of excellent research contributions.
JEE Star Reviewers (2023)
Our annual recognition of a few members of the JEE community is always an important activity to highlight some of our outstanding contributions from the past year. We would be remiss, however, not to acknowledge everyone in the community for helping continue to make JEE a top destination globally for sharing engineering education research. All of our authors, reviewers, editorial board members, and readers play critical roles, and we appreciate you.
Farewell from the JEE Editorial Board
We are saying a fond farewell to Assistant Editor Matilde Sánchez-Peña. Matilde has been on the JEE Editorial Board since 2021 and has been a wonderful member of our team. We wish her well in her continued role as a faculty member. It has been a pleasure to work with you, Matilde!
Postdoctoral training holds an increasingly important place in preparation for leading academic and research positions. While little empirical research has described postdoctoral training beyond the sciences, across all fields, “misaligned expectations” are often touted as a key source of postdoctoral strife.
This article describes mentorship competency beliefs within engineering and computer science fields, which increasingly engage in postdoctoral training.
An embedded mixed-methods design was used to quantitatively identify mentorship profiles from survey data using latent profile analysis (LPA) from a sample of n = 118 postdoctoral scholars and n = 165 postdoctoral supervisors. Qualitative thematic analysis of interviews with n = 29 postdoctoral scholars and n = 20 postdoctoral supervisors was used to identify meaning in the differences between quantitative profiles. The combination of LPA with thematic analysis enabled the triangulation of distinct postdoctoral mentorship profile definitions.
LPA identified six postdoctoral fellow profiles and four supervisor profiles, which became clearly definable through thematic analysis. Postdoc profiles included Technical Manager, Autonomy Focused Advisor, Stretched Mentor, Well-Rounded Mentor, Exemplar Mentor, and Leader-Mentor, while supervisor profiles included Autonomous Mentor, Reflective Mentor, Research Lab Mentor, and Confident Leader-Mentor. Some of these are aligned, but several are not, giving insight into the phenomenon of “misaligned expectations” in postdoctoral literature.
The mentorship profiles illustrate the misalignment in expectations, which leads to negative mentorship experiences for many postdoctoral scholars.
In addition to the benefits of a diverse faculty, many institutions are under pressure from students and administrators to increase the number of faculty from historically excluded backgrounds. Despite increases in the numbers of engineering PhD earners from these groups, the percentages of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino tenure-track faculty have not increased, and the percentage of women remains low.
The purpose of this study is to identify how experiences in graduate school encourage or deter PhD earners from historically excluded groups in pursuing an engineering academic career.
We conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with engineering PhD students and recent graduates, with half of participants interested and half disinterested in pursuing an academic career after graduation.
Three key factors emerged as strongly influential on participants' desire to pursue an academic career: their relationship with their advisor, their perception of their advisor's work–life balance, and their perception of the culture of academia. Participants extrapolated their experiences in graduate school to their imagined lives as faculty. The results illuminate the reasons why engineering PhD earners from historically underrepresented groups remain in or leave the academic career pathway after graduate school.
The findings of this study have important implications for how graduate students' and postdoc's relationships with their advisors as well as perceptions of their advisors' work–life balances and the culture of academia affect future faculty. We make recommendations on what students, faculty, and administrators can do to create a more inclusive environment to encourage students from historically excluded groups to consider academic careers.
The potential for broadening participation in engineering among Black undergraduates via transfer pathways is considerable, given their large share of the community college population. By understanding the opportunities and challenges presented within the context of transfer, this potential can be realized.
The goal of this study is to explore ways in which Black students who transitioned from a community college to a 4-year engineering program describe the institutional factors affecting their transfer processes.
Drawing from a 3-year qualitative research study involving approximately 27 Black engineering transfer students at a large, predominantly White, institution, we present data derived through interviews and focus groups with these undergraduates.
Participants expressed that they benefited from supportive institutional agents who offered engineering transfer-related resources. These included both faculty and advisors in their mostly Minority Serving Community Colleges (MSCCs) as well as advisors from the engineering college at the 4-year institution. In addition, respondents described being part of a number of community college programs, including some for Black collegians, that offered resources for transfer. Nonetheless, some participants shared problems that emerged during the transfer process, including having to self-navigate confusing transfer websites or self-advocate to resolve erroneous admissions decisions.
We suggest a need to elevate MSCCs as learning environments that can produce future Black engineers. We also recommend a systems-level approach that brings together community colleges and 4-year institutions while also accounting for issues related to resources as well as power dynamics that students may encounter.
Developing teamwork skills is a central objective of engineering education. Psychological safety and conflict management are pivotal components of teamwork, yet despite their significance, research in engineering project-based learning (PBL) contexts is scant. Understanding students' experiences with psychological safety and its interaction with conflict is crucial to inform PBL pedagogy.
This study delves into first-year engineering students' experiences of psychological safety and conflict, including their evolution in a PBL course.
Throughout the semester, we collected data from 82 students via written reflections and focus groups. Employing a thematic analysis underpinned by the team conflict dynamics model, we characterized students' experiences with psychological safety and conflict.
At the semester's outset, psychological safety was notably lacking. Students often hesitated to share ideas due to apprehensions about peer reactions and fears of negative judgments. As the semester advanced, consistent positive affirmations nurtured psychological safety, increasing students' confidence and readiness to discuss ideas openly and engage in healthy task conflict. Notably, process conflicts arising from absenteeism, poor communication, and procrastination were prevalent across teams. When unresolved, these conflicts eroded psychological safety, intensifying stress, exacerbating frustrations, and provoking relationship conflict.
Our study underscores the intertwined nature of psychological safety and conflict in shaping the first-year design experience in student teams. We urge faculty to recognize their pivotal role in fostering an inclusive culture and highlight pedagogical strategies that can bolster psychological safety at the onset, encourage healthy task conflict, and monitor unhealthy process and relationship conflicts.
Teamwork has become a central element of engineering education. However, the race- and gender-based marginalization prevalent in society is also prevalent in engineering student teams. These problematic dynamics limit learning opportunities, isolate historically marginalized students, and ultimately push students away from engineering, further reinforcing the demographic imbalances in the profession.
While there are strategies to improve the experiences of marginalized students within teams, there are few tools for detecting marginalizing behaviors as they occur. The purpose of this work is to examine how peer evaluations collected as a normal part of an engineering course can be used as a window into team dynamics to reveal marginalization as it occurs.
We used a semester of peer evaluation data from a large engineering course in which a team project is the central assignment and peer evaluation occurs four times during the course. We designed an algorithm to identify teams where marginalization may be occurring. We then performed qualitative analyses using a sociolinguistic analysis.
Results show that the algorithm helps identify teams where marginalization occurs. Qualitative analyses of four illustrative cases demonstrated the stealth appearance and evolution of marginalization, providing strong evidence that hidden within language of peer evaluation are indicators of marginalization. Based on the wider dataset, we present a taxonomy (eight categories) of linguistic marginalization appearing in peer comments.
Both peer evaluation scores and the language used in peer evaluations can reveal team inequities and may serve as a near-real-time mechanism to interrupt marginalization within engineering teams.
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