Gender and Ethnic Differences in Classroom Engagement and Knowledge Building in Engineering Energy Science Courses

Abstract

Research is clear that women and under-represented ethnic and racial minorities experience engineering classroom climates differently than their male and predominantly white peers. However, little research has investigated differences in engagement and knowledge building between dominant and non-dominant groups in engineering contexts. In this study we examine gender and ethnic differences in student engagement and knowledge building in engineering energy science classrooms. Results indicated that there were significant group differences in students' perception of support for question asking, affective engagement, and behavioral-effortful class participation. Follow up comparisons of gender-ethnicity combinations revealed insight into the differences among women and under-represented racial and ethnic minorities. White males consistently self-reported significantly higher levels of question asking, affective engagement, and effortful engagement than students from many UREM groups. White females, multiracial females, and multiracial males consistently self-reported lower levels of question asking, affective engagement, and effortful engagement than students from many other backgrounds. Follow up comparisons of gender-ethnicity combinations revealed insight into the differences among women and under-represented racial and ethnic minorities.

The Importance of Teaching Assistant Support and Interactions in Student Engagement

“…Gender: TA support positively predicted attention more strongly for women than for men (Figure 1a), although no significant interactions between gender and effort or participation emerged from the regression models. As numerical minorities in engineering, female students face a number of potential stressors including but not limited to the experience of stereotype threat (Murphy et al, 2007;Steele, 1997), a lower sense of belonging (Lewis et al, 2017) and lower perceptions of support for question-asking in comparison with male peers (Haskett et al, 2017). As a result of these barriers, women may respond more strongly to TA support than men do.…”

Restructuring a Pedagogical Course to Benefit Engineering Ph.D. Students and Faculty

“…EGR 9200 provides the theory and some practice in applying engineering pedagogy to lesson delivery and syllabi development. The course cohort is taught well-established methods to improve student engagement and learning [9,10], to reduce cheating [11], to address all learning styles [12], to promote inclusiveness in the classroom [13], and to structure courses around psychological principles such as Bloom's taxonomy [14]. The EGR 9200 course schedule also includes three guest lectures to introduce the students to issues and opportunities outside of standard teaching:…”