Graduate student experiences of engineering education research in Canada

ABSTRACT

In Canada, formal structures for advancing engineering education research (EER), including graduate programmes, funding, and career pathways, are uncommon. However, an active informal EER community exists. Using the Identity Trajectory Framework, we designed an exploratory basic interpretive qualitative study to learn how 21 graduate students experienced EER in Canada. EER’s dualist internal identity and lack of external identity, credibility, and structural support create a feedback loop of uncertainties for graduate students trying to navigate EER. This inhibits the healthy development of EER as an academic discipline, and thereby, the healthy development of EER graduate students. If we want to successfully support graduate students in developing their identity as EER researchers, we need institutional structures. Understanding how graduate students experience EER in Canada is important to understand how to build capacity here and in other locales where the field is newly developing.

KEYWORDS:

• Engineering education research
• graduate student identity
• Identity Trajectory Framework
• exploratory
• qualitative

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the participants in this study and appreciate their perspectives and experiences, and to our advisors who supported us through our EER graduate degrees!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) are two of three national funding bodies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jillian Seniuk Cicek

Jillian Seniuk Cicek is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Engineering Professional Practice and Engineering Education at the University of Manitoba, in Canada. Her research areas in engineering education include decolonising engineering education; understanding how students learn decolonised curricula; student perspectives, identity, and learning; epistemological tensions in engineering education research; instructor pedagogical knowledges, approaches, and belief systems; and engineering competencies required for engineering practice. She has a background in fine arts, creative writing, and education, and a PhD in engineering education.

Robyn Paul

Robyn Mae Paul is an Assistant Professor in Sustainable Systems at the Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Canada, where she teaches engineering ethics and sustained design courses. Her work aims to bring social justice, anti-colonial, and ecofeminist principles to deconstruct the culture of engineering education and bring expanded narratives into awareness.

Patricia Sheridan

Patricia Sheridan is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in the Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education and Practice, and the Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on understanding how students learn teamwork and develop their capabilities in engineering design teams. Her teaching focuses on integrating teamwork and leadership learning across the engineering curriculum. She currently teaches engineering design and teamwork in the first-year engineering design courses. She holds a BASc and MASc in Mechanical Engineering, and a PhD in Engineering Leadership Education.