Attitudes that Students Believe Best Characterize Engineers

Beyond knowledge and cognitive learning outcomes, engineering education should achieve affective outcomes. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has articulated attitudes that are supportive of the professional practice of engineering. This research explored the extent to which engineering students believed that various attitudes were characteristic of both engineers and themselves. Three groups participated in the study: (1) ~120 first year civil, environmental, and architectural engineering students; (2) 18 senior civil engineering students; and (3) 21 students at the end of their junior year of college (in 7 different engineering majors, attending 5 different institutions). Students in all of the groups were presented with a list of 18 attitudes and asked to indicate which five were the most representative of engineers and then which five were most representative of themselves; groups 1 and 2 answered this question as part of a written survey in fall 2015 while group 3 answered the question as part of interviews in spring 2015. The interview participants explained why they ascribed particular attributes to engineers or themselves. Chi-square tests were used to determine if there were differences in the attitudes identified by students as representative of engineers versus personally (95% confidence). The traits most commonly associated with engineers (by 62-49% of the students) were: thoroughness, commitment, curiosity, persistence, and high expectations. The traits least commonly associated with engineers (by only 4-12% of the students) were: sensitivity, empathy, fairness, tolerance, and positivity. There were not significant differences in the attitudes identified for engineers based on the gender, major, or rank of the students. The traits most commonly attributed to themselves (by 52-41% of the students) were: curiosity, respect, commitment, and consideration of others. Differences between the frequency that a trait was attributed to engineers versus personally were found for 10 of the 18 attitudes. On average, students selected two of the same traits for both themselves and engineers. There were some demographic differences in the attitudes that students selected as personally representative. Future work will determine if those with particular personal attitudes and/or perceptions of engineers’ attitudes have differential retention in engineering. Background Engineering education should strive to educate students across all three domains of Bloom’s taxonomy: cognitive (knowledge and intellectual skills), psychomotor (motor-skills), and affective (interest, attitudes, values). When the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) considered the Body of Knowledge (BOK) required for entry into the professional practice of civil engineering in order to meet the challenges of the 21 century, they focused on the cognitive domain, but also acknowledged the value of the affective domain. The BOK describes the affective domain as “an inseparable complement” to the cognitive domain. 2 For example, an individual’s attitudes, interests, and values determine how their knowledge and skills are applied. Attitudes have also been shown to play an important role in individual aptitude and both individual and group achievement. 2,11,27,30 Some other educational theories embrace the connection between knowledge and affect more clearly, including the conceive-designimplement-operate (CDIO) taxonomy. Internationally, there have also been calls for education to consider values and affect. The BOK states “bottom line... the profession wants individuals who possess more than knowledge and skill.” p. 92 Attitudes were the focus of this study. Attitudes have been associated with the third level of Bloom’s taxonomy for the affective domain. This is characterized by an individual demonstrating acceptance, preference for, and commitment to a value. Attitudes are included among the 24 outcomes in the BOK, one among the nine professional outcomes. The BOK offers what it terms a “partial list” of “significant attitudes... that support the effective practice of civil engineering”, including 20 attitudes (Table 1): “commitment, confidence, consideration of others, curiosity, entrepreneurship, fairness, high expectations, honesty, integrity, intuition, judgment, optimism, persistence, positiveness, respect, self-esteem, sensitivity, thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and tolerance.”2 p. 148 Interestingly, the attitude entrepreneurship is omitted from the list in Appendix O of the BOK p. ; this is perhaps indicative of the difficulty in converging on a single set of appropriate or desirable attitudes. Some of these attitudes are reflective of a “People Mind” as described by Goldberg and Somerville, such as consideration of others. Despite the seeming certainty of the list of important attitudes that were articulated for civil engineers in the BOK, the attitudes that are perceived to be important for engineers have been debated and discussed for a long time. For example, in 1954 Goshen discussed a typical “engineer personality” that included precision and meticulousness, intelligence toward mechanical principles, confidence, pride and self-esteem, dependability, sensitivity to criticism, rigidness, knowing little about human principles, difficulty working with others, and resistance to change. The author pointed out the short comings of these attributes with respect to solving “engineering problems today” and called for training engineers to learn about human factors. In 1962, Frye discussed the attitudes that he felt were important in becoming a successful engineer, from the perspective of industry. Attitude was discussed after ability and drive. The six attitudes promoted were: a desire to get a job done, positive thinking, a big picture view of the problem to be solved, concern for helping the company, humility, and finally ethics and integrity. While some of these older views of engineering are still somewhat relevant today, it is clear that engineers need a different set of attitudes to be successful. Newport tried to determine which attributes were linked to the “effectiveness” of engineers. From open-ended interviews they developed a list of 68 attributes, and then in follow-up surveys with supervisors and engineers found that 34 correlated significantly with effectiveness. Nguyen compared the extent to which engineers working in industry, engineering academics, and engineering students perceived seven generic qualities and attributes as “essential” for an engineer; attitudes (behavior, thoughts, and actions) were among these seven. Overall, engineers in industry ranked attitudes as the most important among the seven – above technical knowledge and skills, intellectual skills, standards of engineering practice, business practices (which ranked at 92.3 to 66.2, respectively). In addition, engineers in industry rated attitudes significantly more important (96.9) than academics or students (70.6 and 75.7, respectively). The ten attitudes evaluated included competence, integrity, commitment, flexibility, a commitment to life long learning, reliability, tolerance, conscientiousness, approachability, and punctuality (listed in order from highest importance at 87.7 to lowest importance at 24.6, as ranked by engineers in industry). Studies that have explored the perceptions of engineering students with respect to the attitudes, values, or characteristics that are important for engineers are not numerous. In the Nguyen study, the average student ratings of the importance of ten attitudes were the highest for competence and commitment (64.9), followed by integrity, conscientious, reliability, approachability, flexibility, and commitment to lifelong learning (56.8 to 48.6), and the lowest ratings for tolerance and punctuality (37.8 and 35.1). Louie surveyed junior and senior students, and summarized the types of “characteristics” of ideal professional engineers that the students identified in four groups: technical competence including creativity; communication skills for effective teamwork; conscientiousness, diligence, persistence and a drive toward maximal performance; and high moral standards. The third group is quite similar to many of the attitudes that were listed in the BOK, such as commitment, high expectations, persistence, and thoroughness. The fourth group of characteristics seems similar to the attitudes of fairness, honesty, and integrity. In general, engineering does not seem to readily associate itself with people-oriented attitudes. The distinction between people-orientation and thing-orientation has been proposed as a potential reason for the low percentages of women in engineering. Hess et al. documented the minimal use of the terms empathy and care in association with engineering, along with varying perceptions of engineering as empathetic/caring by engineering faculty. They note, In two of the three sessions, engineering faculty participant responses tended to vacillate between minimizing and dismissing the presence of care/empathy within the practice of engineering (industry and academic) and their teaching – although not explicitly stating whether or not they personally believed it should be present or not. p. 15 However, the growth of humanitarian programs in engineering education and practice, including Engineers Without Borders (EWB), perhaps points to the importance of people-oriented attitudes for some engineers. The research of Litchfield and Javernick-Will found some differences in the characteristics or personas that EWB members attributed to themselves versus engineers in general. For example, humanitarian characteristics (such as caring) were self-descriptors for 34.6% of the EWB members but only attributed to engineers in general by 8.2%; curious was a self-descriptor for 14.7% of the EWB members, but only used to describe engineers in general by 8.5%; optimistic was used as a self-descriptor by 5.1% of th