Using a Critical Incident-centered Transition Theory Framework to Explore Engineering Education Research Faculty Transitions

This methods paper describes the integration of critical incident techniques and Schlossberg’s Transition Theory to create “incident timelines” that allow researchers to explore the transition of early career engineering education researchers into new faculty positions. In this methods paper, we demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by discussing the systematic development of our incident timeline analysis. We illustrate the methodological choices made to: 1) explore a diverse set of transitions into faculty positions, 2) identify critical events that impact these transitions, and 3) examine connections between events and strategies over time and across faculty members’ transitions. Explorations of emerging and systematically developed methodologies will continue to expand the range of approaches available for use in engineering education research and further the community’s ability to examine complex phenomena. Motivation Throughout the development of engineering education as a field, one thing has remained consistent: the interest for change, particularly curriculum development and pedagogical innovation [1]. Accordingly, more regular opportunities are presenting themselves for people to receive formal training in engineering education research. As these opportunities become more common, early career research faculty are increasingly aligning themselves with the field, presumptively orienting their career towards realizing impact in engineering education. While engineering education faculty may face challenges similar to those faced by other interdisciplinary scholars, such as negotiating legitimacy while attempting to impact the field and engineering education more broadly [2], this group is unique in that they are embedded within the system (i.e., engineering education) that they are trying to change. Unfortunately, professional development opportunities for early career faculty that take this route are limited. To date, efforts to better prepare scholars for academic roles have primarily focused on preparing them to be independent researchers [3, 4], teach undergraduate courses [5–7], and support their ability to advance their career [8, 9], as opposed to impacting change more broadly. We argue that understanding the transition experiences of scholars aiming to impact change within engineering education is important for supporting sustained success. Purpose To address this gap in the literature, our team is examining the role of institutional context on the agency of early career engineering education faculty. As part of that larger study, we wanted to more closely examine our transitions, as early career engineering education researchers, into a diverse set of roles and institutions. In particular, we wanted to capture the significant events of our transition and isolate factors that impacted our experiences and agency as we worked within and towards our desired impact areas. The purpose of this paper is to describe the corresponding methodological decisions, particularly the integration of critical incident technique [10] and Schlossberg’s Transition Theory [11–13] to create “incident timelines” capable of examining the transition of early career engineering education researchers into new faculty positions. Studying transitions is particularly difficult for several reasons, which is why it requires a novel approach. First, asking questions after-the-fact may not elicit information about how people were experiencing a situation in the moment, as people often forget or distort events. Second, people may be reluctant to share certain information, particularly in a situation where interviews would either be conducted by another faculty member or a graduate student. Third, the significance of an event can be misunderstood if not interpreted in context or in relation to other elements in a person’s life at the time of the event. And lastly, the transition into an academic position occurs over time and, thus, an approach that is largely cross-sectional may only offer a snapshot of the experience. In response to these circumstances, our aim is to demonstrate the usefulness of our methodological approach by highlighting the details of our incident timeline analysis. Study Background We, the authors, represent the six faculty participants that were involved in this study. Each of us provide a different perspective on transitioning to a faculty role due to our diverse set of backgrounds and training as well as the nature of our positions. Three of us were formally trained in engineering education research through doctoral education programs; two developed engineering education knowledge and practices through exposure as part of our doctoral and post-doctoral program work; and one of us developed the knowledge and practices while in a faculty position. In our new faculty positions, we represent both tenure and non-tenure track roles and have positions that are within a range of programs. To examine the impact of institutional context on our agency, we selected and implemented aspects from both collaborative autoethnography and collaborative inquiry to study the experiences of our research team [14, 15]. Throughout the first two years of our positions, we wrote weekly, monthly, pre-semester, and post-semester reflections to capture and make sense of our experiences. These reflections were completed concurrently with weekly virtual meetings to discuss/make sense of our experiences. Further discussions of the collaborative autoethnography and collaborative inquiry methodologies can be referenced in previous publications [14]. To conduct a more focused investigation of our transitions, however, we needed to make particular theoretical and analytical research design decisions to explore the transition data using a different lens. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these methodological decisions and describe how we integrated aspects of a theoretical framework and a data collection/analysis technique to develop incident timelines. We selected Scholossberg’s Transition Theory as our guiding theoretical framework. Due in part to the complexity of a transition into a faculty position, especially at diverse institutional contexts, it was necessary to determine the extent to which particular events and the relationship between events impacted a new faculty member’s experience. To accomplish this, we integrated the Critical Incident Technique with Transition Theory to specifically investigate individual events that were considered significant to the overall transition, ultimately leading to the development of an incident timeline. The subsequent sections will illustrate this integration and the methodological choices that allow us to: • Explore a diverse set of transitions into faculty positions; • Identify critical events that impact these transitions; and • Examine connections between events and strategies over time and across faculty members’ transitions. Preliminary results will be shared to illustrate the application of this methodology, along with a discussion of strengths and limitations of this methodological approach. Methodological Decisions To develop and explore the incident timelines, we used a multiple case study approach [16], where each faculty member represented a case. Data focused on the first two years of the faculty experience and the analysis was conducted through an iterative within-case and cross-case process. Because researchers were also participants, cross-case meaning making occurred informally throughout the process. The Q3 qualitative research framework [17, 18] was used to guide the research design, establishing validity and reliability of the data collection (making the data) and analysis (handling the data) early and throughout our process. The following sections explore three critical choices that were made during the research design process: (1) Theoretical Framework Adaptation, (2) Data Selection and Filtering, (3) Analysis Process Design. Choice 1: Theoretical Framework As faculty members navigate the start of their academic careers, they have experiences, anticipated and unanticipated, that lead to adapting and developing as scholars, educators, and professionals. Schlossberg’s Transition Theory provides a lens through which to explore how individuals identify and adapt based on these experiences or “transitions” in their lives [11–13]. An individual’s transition, according to Schlossberg and colleagues, tends to include three phases: “moving in”, or becoming familiar with the new roles and relationships brought on by the experience; “moving through”, and becoming a full participant in the experience; and “moving out”, or getting ready to exit the experience. Originally, this theory was created to describe transitions within adult development. In later works by Schlossberg and colleagues, the theory’s applicability was expanded to a variety of populations. Transition theory has since been used in many contexts—for example, to explore doctoral students’ pathways through extracurricular programming [19] and to study transitions and pathways of underrepresented, or understudied, students, such as student athletes [20] and veterans [21, 22]. Given our focus on early career faculty, we chose Transition Theory to examine our own experiences as we have changed our roles, routines, and professional relationships in the first years of our new positions. Over the phases of a transition, an individual’s experiences are influenced by the context of the transition, the characteristics of the individual such as their motivations and beliefs, the extent to which they have support, and the strategies they utilize. These factors, known as the 4S System [12, 23], are defined as follows: • situation – the individual’s situation at the time of transition, • self – the individual’s personal characteristics that could impact how they perceive the transition, including psychological resources [23] (e