A grounded theory model of the dynamics of undergraduate engineering students' researcher identity and epistemic thinking

Abstract

Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) in science and engineering offer a number of positive outcomes to the students who are able to participate, including increased retention, clarified career goals, and development of problem‐solving skills. There have been a number of calls for research that investigates the experiences, identity, and cognitive develop of students who participate in UREs. In addition, recent work in other areas suggests that undergraduate students' perceptions often differ from those of faculty, graduate students, and staff, suggesting the need for research that considers the students' perspectives within these experiences. As such, in this constructivist grounded theory study, we sought to develop a contextualized model relating researcher identity and epistemic thinking for undergraduate engineering students engaged in research experiences. Data were collected from interviews with 20 undergraduate engineering students with research experience at six institutions. Coded interview transcripts were used to create structured memos that included a participant description, summary of salient concepts from theoretical frameworks and/or themes, and connections to other participants. These structured memos served as the data set used to develop the grounded theory model. This work establishes that (1) students' initial dispositions and beliefs about research influence their perceptions of researchers and themselves as researchers (researcher identity), (2) researcher identity can dissolve or solidify through UREs, (3) researcher identity affects and is affected by students' reflection on research practices, and (4) social interactions and context shape knowledge of research and researchers, researcher identity, and interest in research. Our work expands existing identity and epistemic thinking theories by investigating how students establish a researcher identity, conducting a context specific study of epistemic thinking, and exploring the relationships between these two constructs.

Eurocentric epistemologies in engineering: Manifestations in first‐year student design teams and consequences for student learning

“…For example, scholars have suggested that textbook problems, which are utilized in traditional approaches to teaching and learning in the engineering sciences, remove sociocultural complexities from engineering problem solving, leading students to believe that engineering knowledge is certain and objective, with singular, knowable, and correct answers (Cech & Sherick, 2015; Montfort et al, 2014). Other studies have concluded that research experiences, “which include social interactions and specific epistemic research tasks,” inform students' beliefs about what science and engineering research is, how engineers generate knowledge, and their identity development as engineering students (Faber et al, 2021). Such experiences have the effect of socializing students into the dominant epistemic tradition of the discipline, despite the problematic impacts such experiences might have on students in engineering.…”

Predicting undergraduate career goal change in aresearch‐intensivecommunity

“…Career clarification has therefore been and still remains an important outcome for many undergraduate research programs (Olivares‐Donoso & González, 2019). In recent years, educational research has sought to move beyond simply documenting career clarification as an outcome (Adedokun et al, 2013) and toward studies examining the ways career goal development depends on program structures and socio‐cognitive factors (Faber et al, 2022; Hernandez et al, 2018).…”

A Qualitative Methods Primer: A Resource to Assist Engineering Education Scholars in Mentoring Traditionally Trained Engineering Faculty to Educational Research

“…Examples: Faber et al [39] used a constructivist grounded theory approach to develop a theoretical model of researcher identity and epistemic thinking in undergraduate research experiences. The manuscript identifies the process of moving from interviews to model construction based in grounded theory.…”