Tensions of Integration in Professional Formation: Investigating Development of Engineering Students' Social and Technical Perceptions

This brief paper depicts a current snapshot of an ongoing investigation that probes how students reconcile social and technical forms of identity in engineering education. While the detailed results are represented in other publications, this paper highlights the study in its current form in order to indicate what will be discussed at the poster session that corresponds to this paper. Summary of Background Twenty-first century engineers face incredible challenges and opportunities, many of which are socially complex, transcending the traditional “technical” boundaries of engineering. The technology produced by engineers must not only function as predicted by mathematical and theoretical models but must also operate beneficially and seamlessly in complex social contexts. In this sense, engineers must embody an integrated social and technical – or sociotechnical – identity rather than a dualistic social/technical one. A growing body of scholarship has discussed how dominant cultures of engineering shape students’ and professionals’ understandings of social and technical dimensions of their work. Further, engineering education research has advanced understanding of how engineering identity is formed by external, structural forces. Yet, from a psychological perspective, we know little about how engineering students come to perceive and embody their identities as engineers, especially in relation to social and technical dimensions of these identities. Thus, we organized this study around the following research questions. RQ0: How do students psychologically experience identity trajectories of becoming engineers? RQ1: How do students perceive the social and technical features of engineering identity? RQ2: How do students internally experience their identities as engineers, particularly with regard to social and technical dimensions of these identities? RQ3: How do social and technical perceptions of their engineering identity develop and change in the course of the engineering curriculum or in the transition to the workplace?