Zooming Out from the Struggling Individual Student: An Account of the Cultural Construction of Engineering Ability in an Undergraduate Programming Class

Abstract

Background To explain educational problems such as student attrition, engineering education literature often focuses on the characteristics of individuals. In 2006, Ray McDermott and Hervé Varenne called for examining the “cultural construction” of educational problems, uncovering how multiple actors create and inscribe meaning to the educational problem. Purpose We apply the cultural construction framework to examine how the educational problem of a student being “not cut out for engineering” is constructed within the context of a specific electrical engineering course. We focus on culturally taken‐for‐granted course structures, practices, and interactions, all of which produce the local enactment of this common educational problem. Method We used ethnographic methods, including field‐noted participant observations, one‐on‐one participant interviews, and video‐recorded student work on lab assignments. Coordinating multiple data streams enabled us to question explanations couched in terms of individual ability and background, and to illustrate how ability hierarchies were constructed in the educational context. Results Our findings illustrate how several mundane and seemingly innocuous aspects of engineering classrooms add up to construct the educational problem of our focal student as “not cut out” for engineering. Contributions to this construction included lecture seating positions, interactional norms in lecture and lab, and labels made meaningful through institutional and interactional processes. Conclusions The forces at play in constructing educational problems for students are deeply embedded in institutions, disciplines, and society, making it difficult to generate a simple list of instructional interventions. We highlight cultural construction analysis as a potentially fruitful orientation for researchers and practitioners to find the particular sites and tools for local intervention.

Designing for institutional transformation: Six principles for department-level interventions

“…Prior research has documented how this oppression emerges in interpersonal interactions and subconsciously becomes embedded within departmental cultures (e.g., Refs. [111][112][113][114]).…”

A Snapshot Methodological Review of Journal Articles in Engineering Education Research

“…Those papers under the "qualitative advanced" category used phenomenological (2), ethnography (2), lexical analysis, narrative method (1), critical theory (2), collaborative inquiry (1) for analysis. In particular, the novelty in using qualitative methods in EER was exemplified by one study [12], which drew upon critical theory and the narrative approach to examine the marginalized educational experiences of a female undergrad engineering student through one longitudinal interview. The large proportion of published qualitative studies and particularly the inclusion of research conducted in paradigms other than (post)positivism suggest that the JEE is in a process of shifting away from the dominance of positivist quantitative research in its publications.…”

Smartness in Engineering Culture: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue

“…In higher STEM education, Kevin O'Connor has examined the ways particular institutional trajectories, instructor discourse, and course culture contribute to constructing categories of "Calculus-ready" [47,48]. Secules investigated the cultural construction of "not cut out for" engineering in an introductory programming course for electrical engineers [8]. Many of these studies make important insights about the subtle and unintended impacts of culture on students, even in courses with evidencebased pedagogy and well-intentioned instructors.…”

“…Secules approached this limitation once the study concluded by making practical recommendations to the collaborator instructor and to readers [8]. Rather than leveraging critiques only against broad culture, specific classroom practices that recreate broad culture for the local setting are identified and shifted.…”

“…Relatedly, 40% of girls believe they aren't smart enough for their dream career by the time they enter high school [7]; women remain among the demographics underrepresented in engineering. Recent ethnographic work has clearly demonstrated how the belief that 'not everyone is cut out for engineering' is salient and problematic in engineering classrooms [8].…”