Constructing “Calculus Readiness”: Struggling for Legitimacy in a Diversity-Promoting Undergraduate Engineering Program

Kevin O’Connor is assistant professor of educational psychology. His scholarship focuses on human action, communication, and learning as socioculturally organized phenomena. One major strand of research has explored the varied trajectories taken by students as they attempt to enter professional disciplines such as engineering, and focuses on the dilemmas encountered by students as they move through these institutionalized trajectories. Another strand of research has explored community organizing efforts that aim to construct new trajectories into valued futures for youth, especially those of nondominant communities. He is co-editor of a 2010 National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook, Learning Research as a Human Science. Other work has appeared in Linguistics and Education; Mind, Culture, and Activity; Anthropology & Education Quarterly, the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science; the Journal of Engineering Education; and the Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research. His teaching interests include developmental psychology; sociocultural theories of communication, learning, and identity; qualitative methods; and discourse analysis.