The Development of Critical Engineering Agency, Identity, and the Impact on Engineering Career Choices

The choice of an engineering discipline upon entrance to college is often a partly informed decision. This paper explores the agency and identity of engineering students through the lens of critical engineering agency as a first step in the development of an affective model that describes the choice of engineering as a college major. The nationally representative Sustainability and Gender in Engineering (SaGE) survey was completed by 6,772 college students across the U.S. who were enrolled in first-year English courses during Fall 2011. The topics included in this survey covered students' experiences in their last high school science classes, beliefs about engineering and sustainability, as well as demographics and students' prior academic performance. Exploratory factor analyses were performed to identify measures of personal agency and global agency and validate the constructs of identity for use in a critical engineering agency model. These constructs were regressed on the choice of engineering and science. The results indicate that the combination of strong math and science identities paired with high personal agency can increase the likelihood of the choice of engineering. While students who pursue science and engineering have similar high school science experiences in terms of preparation before college, engineering students are distinguishable through their elevated math identities and personal agency over science students. These results indicate that preparation and recruitment of future engineers would be improved by focusing on the aspects of engineering which are relevant to students' sense of personal agency and incorporate math and science interests and experiences.