You can change the world, but not this homework assignment: The contradictory rhetoric of engineering agency

A Review of Agentic Frameworks in Engineering Education

“…Students' sense of agency is limited by the ways undergraduate assignments are structured in a manner that doesn't allow students to negotiate or reframe the assignment. Chua and Cagle [37] suggest how these limitations may influence whether students develop a sense of agency to modify or push back on the constraints or requirements given in future context, which contradicts the messaging from discourse that position "engineers as powerful agent" [p. 3]. This preliminary study begins to highlight how there needs to be coherence between public messaging of what it means to be an engineer and engineering curricula and pedagogy.…”

“…While the student in [36] pushed back on the culture of engineering by theorizing, Chua and Cagle [37] emphasized the disconnect between how students are positioned in recruitment efforts as "change-makers" with reality where curricula and pedagogy constrain students. Engineering agency is often framed in rhetoric that emphasizes the need for engineers to negotiate the type of problems they solve and how they approach those problems.…”

“…Such as fostering a culture that reinforces epistemic beliefs (i.e., certainty of engineering knowledge) that there is one right way to solve a problem or no choice in decisions. Drawing on the theory of structural power, critical pedagogy, and epistemic rhetoric analysis, Chua and Cagle [37] used critical discourse analysis to understand how engineering education text artifacts may be limiting students' sense of agency. Students' sense of agency is limited by the ways undergraduate assignments are structured in a manner that doesn't allow students to negotiate or reframe the assignment.…”

“…Beyond the three overarching student outcomes identified as a result of examining agency, some studies emphasized the importance of students developing a sense of agency [21], [24], [33]. In contrast, others like Chua and Cagle [37] highlighted how engineering education discourse might be resulting in a lack of agency. Some studies affirmed the importance of empowering students to enact agency or developing a sense of agency as an essential skill to engineering [21], [36].…”

“…In addition, the majority of the articles discussed the relationship between structure (or culture) and agency; however, there were a few studies which described the internal processes associated with agency or how it can be supported and developed for the student outcomes studied. More importantly, in addition to discussing how to empower students to enact change, several studies recognized the need for institutional structural and cultural change [22], [23], [36], [37]. Below, we discuss the role of faculty as it relates to change in engineering education through faculty agency.…”