A Series of Singular Testimonies: A New Way to Explore Unearned Advantages and Unearned Disadvantages

This paper describes the development of a unique interview method based on Peggy McIntosh’s “serial testimony” technique. Our “singular testimony” technique preserves many of the hallmarks of the serial testimony technique, specifically: 1. Giving participants the opportunity to share their personal narrative, or testimony, about unearned advantages and unearned disadvantages as they perceive them; 2. Allowing participants to speak uninterrupted; 3. Exhibiting no judgment and expressing no rebuttal to participant responses; 4. Returning to a particular advantage/disadvantage for further exploration and follow up questions in additional “rounds.” We have piloted our interview technique with recent engineering graduates, and found it to be efficacious for eliciting participants’ perceptions of unearned advantages and disadvantages related to their engineering education. In this paper, we (1) describe how we adapted the serial testimony technique into a singular testimony interview method, (2) present our results related to participants’ perceptions of unearned advantages and disadvantages, and (3) discuss how a particular trait can be perceived as an advantage by one participant, but as a disadvantage by another. We will also present specific examples of certain unearned traits (such as economic status) that some participants simultaneously viewed as both advantages and disadvantages in pursuing their engineering education. We end with implications for using this method to illuminate visible and invisible forms of privilege and oppression, underrepresentation, and marginalization that undergraduates may experience during their engineering education.