Beyond the monolith: A systematic review of the literature on Latiné/x/a/o students in engineering using a liberative approach

Background

This systematic review of the literature on Latiné/x/a/o students in engineering was motivated by the recent increase in interest and thus scholarship about this population and the need for a nuanced understanding of the population's diversity.

Purpose

This article's purpose is to provide a basis for critically exploring how heterogeneity within the Latiné/x/a/o engineering student population—and across the spectrum of pre-college to graduate school—is used in engineering educational scholarship. The following research question is addressed: “How is the diversity within Latiné engineering students exemplified in the engineering education literature?”

Scope/Method

This work was guided by a liberative approach as the driving framework to review and synthesize literature published in peer-reviewed journal articles from 2005 to 2018 that met the following inclusion criteria: (i) population of interest included Latinés; (ii) focused on engineering or included engineering within the larger STEM; and (iii) studied K–20 education.

Results

Sixty-nine studies were reviewed and synthesized. Key findings include an insufficient focus on Latiné students, an increased use of purposeful and critical theoretical frameworks, and a lack of demographics used to present a nuanced understanding of Latiné students in engineering.

Conclusions

We conclude that contextualized demographics should be included which enable analysis that provides nuanced understandings of Latiné students in engineering. While there is increased interest within engineering education to work with Latiné students, our findings point to the need of ensuring that research is conducted with cultural sensitivity, accuracy, and a nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of Latiné individuals.