Nuestro Impacto: An Insider Look into the Connections between Our Past Experiences and Current Teaching and Mentoring Practices

Abstract

This full research paper discusses the experiences of five Latiné/x faculty in engineering and what motivated them towards developing equity-minded educational practices for their undergraduate students. The five faculty participants provided written reflections on how their life and professional experiences have informed said practices. From a social constructionism paradigm and using narrative inquiry methodology, a combination of in vivo and descriptive coding (first cycle) followed by emergent and focused coding (second cycle) were used by the first three authors to generate a codebook. The theoretical frameworks of Community Cultural Wealth, LatCrit, and Hidden Curriculum guided the data analysis and interpretation process. Two layers of member-checking were conducted amongst the last two authors as well as additional Latiné/x faculty in engineering who were adjacent to this work and acknowledged at the end of the paper. From the analysis, four themes were identified: (a) Counter-storytelling, (b) Structural Determinism (c) Language Origins, and (d) Community Cultural-Navigational, Aspirational, Social, and Familial Capital. Two emerging themes identified were Arrebatos and Nepantla; and Hidden Curriculum. From the findings, a collective narrative was generated by weaving the stories and experiences of the authors. From the narrative, we conclude with recommendations for future faculty development programs as they consider faculties' non-Monolithic backgrounds, cultures, languages, and experiences in engineering education. It is the hope of this paper that more consciousness is raised on nuestro impacto (our impact) in the practice of engineering education.