Understanding Interpretive Research Through the Lens of a Cultural Verfremdungseffekt

Abstract

Background Cross‐cultural studies contribute to engineering education as a globally interconnected field. The methodological challenges posed by research across cultural boundaries must be explored to ensure the quality of such studies. Purpose This article explores challenges and opportunities for insight by examining the effects of researchers' and respondents' cultural norms and values on interpretive research. Method During a prior study of engineering students' competence formation in the United States, Australia, and Thailand, reflections on the project's progression were collected in the primary researcher's log trail. This article analyzes these records through the lens of a Verfremdungseffekt, whereby assumptions underlying the methodology became apparent in its transfer to a different cultural setting. Results Research challenges related to characteristics of Thai culture revealed three methodological insights. The pronounced power‐distance in Thai culture and its effects on the prior study's focus groups highlighted the non‐dualistic nature of interpretive data gathering. The culture's collectivism necessitated significant changes to the data‐gathering tools, thus illustrating the need for an emergent research design in interpretive inquiries. The high‐context communication characteristic of Thai society presented challenges in eliciting and collaboratively analyzing student accounts, and exposed the processes of social construction that characterize both data gathering and interpretation. Conclusion These methodological insights illustrate the importance of an understanding of and engagement with the local context that span the entire research process from making to handling data.

Learning Together: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Exploration of STEAM (STEM + the Arts) Education

“…We propose that it was in this strange place that we, and our students, were provided with an opportunity to expose our disciplinary identities to a fluid process of questioning, appreciation, delineation, and integration across our respective fields. We argue that this potential for STEAM education to contribute to identity formation, through what might also be regarded as a cultural alienation effect (Brecht, ; Walther, ), offers a pathway for students and educators to critically engage with both the potentially problematic “geeky” and “us versus them” aspects of engineering identity and, at the same time, foster students' ability to work effectively with people “who define problems differently” (Downey et al, , p. 107).…”

“…Nicki: Kelly and I first met in December 2011 when we were invited by two of my colleagues in engineering and Kelly's graduate advisor in art education to co‐teach an interdisciplinary design studio (see the Appendix for an abbreviated syllabus). At the start of our collaboration, Kelly and I had very little knowledge of each other's disciplines and had heard only the earliest mentions of the term “STEAM.” Over the next eight months, we met weekly to plan the studio, which would eventually bring together a total of 11 undergraduate and graduate students from engineering, art education, and landscape architecture to explore processes of problem framing and creative thinking in the context of complex, socio‐technical challenges (Guyotte, Sochacka, Costantino, Walther, & Kellam, ). Like other instructors working in an interdisciplinary space, we sought to learn each other's language and recognize and work through disciplinary misconceptions while simultaneously developing deeper and more explicit understandings of our own fields.…”

“…It is not uncommon for engineering instructors and students to describe engineering as one of the hardest, most demanding, and most rigorous of all degree programs (Meyer & Marx, ; Perez‐Pena, ; Stevens, Amos, Jocuns, & Garrison, ). You have to be tough to make it through an engineering degree (Sochacka, Walther, Wilson, & Brewer, ). “Look to your left and to your right,” one of my first professors told me and my classmates in my freshman year.…”

Quality in Interpretive Engineering Education Research: Reflections on an Example Study

“…This process included the specification of a focus group protocol and the reflection on and explicit recording of lessons learned in facilitating the discussions between participants. This documentation also formed the basis for the training of the co-researcher for the Thailand part of the study (Walther, Boonchai, & Radcliffe, 2008). Kirk and Miller (1986) concur that "reliability depends essentially on explicitly described observational procedures" (p. 41).…”

Beyond the Interpretive: Finding Meaning in Qualitative Data

“…Qualitative research has become increasingly used in engineering education over the last 15 years as evidenced by an increasing number of empirical papers that use qualitative methods and publication of various method and theory papers (Baillie & Douglas, 2014;Beddoes, 2013;Borrego, Douglas, & Amelink, 2009;Douglas, Koro-Ljungberg, & Borrego, 2010;Jordan, Adams, Pawley, & Radcliffe, 2009;Kellam, Boklage, & Coley, 2016;KoroLjungberg & Douglas, 2008;Walther, 2014;Walther, Sochacka, & Kellam, 2013). There are dangers, however, that as qualitative research becomes more common the ways in which it is used fail to reflect quality approaches.…”