A Narrative-Style Exploration of Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Beliefs about Smartness and Identity

Smartness in engineering: Beliefs of undergraduate engineering students

“…I was in the advanced classes and put in very minimal effort. —QuintonThis belief is also present in our own previous research; engineering students consistently are those who have been identified or tracked as advanced (e.g., gifted, honors, AP) in their pre‐college experience (Kramer et al, 2019).…”

Board 173: Results of Girl Scouts Taking the Draw-an-Engineer Test: Where Do We Go from Here? (WIP)

“…Similarly, while members of the research team sought to avoid discussing engineering or what an engineer did before participants completed their DAET and interview, participants may have discussed engineers and engineering with troop leaders, peers, or other trusted adults, leading to a change in perception. Previous research has shown the influence of family (e.g., [41], [42]) and role models ( [14], [38]) on career decisions, which may be evident here.…”

Development and Refinement of Interview Protocol to Study Engineering Students' Beliefs and Identities

“…By using our interview protocol development and refinement process, we found that the most insufficient portion of our initial protocol was the portion designed to have participants relate their engineering identity to their identity as smart (or not). This difficulty could be a reflection of the complexity of the interconnected relationship between smartness and engineering [12] and the implicit role that smartness plays in engineering culture (i.e., students usually aren't asked to say if they think they are smart enough to be an engineer or not). To help the research team navigate this complex issue during the interviews, we added several follow-up questions to the interview protocol (e.g., Earlier you said you believe "xxx" about your own smartness and "xxx' about you as an engineer (or engineering students); how are these two things related?).…”