Looking Toward the Real World: Student Conceptions of Engineering

B ackground This paper contributes to the growing body of scholarship on engineering students' conceptions of core concepts in engineering, including their conception of engineering itself. Understanding how students view engineering practice can provide guidance into student responses to course features such as collaborative projects. P urpose (H ypothesis ) The research question addressed in this study is: What do student portfolios reveal about student constructions of engineering? D esign /M ethod Texts from portfolios created by mechanical engineering undergraduates were analyzed qualitatively using concepts drawn from discourse analysis. This approach makes it possible to examine conceptions through close reading of linguistic structure of a body of writing. R esults Students conceived of engineering practice as “the real world,” with most students not conceiving school experiences as integral to practice. Students conceived of engineering practice in terms of strongly contrasting elements rather than as a system of intrinsic elements. Two major aspects in student conceptions were present in the portfolios: values in engineering practice and the role of other people. Largely missing also from the student discourse was the sense that engineering is inherently collaborative. C onclusion Student conceptions formed continua which bear further study to more completely characterize student views. Conceptions of engineering leaders and engineering educators deserve greater attention as well as contrasts and models for comparison to student conceptions. The benefits of understanding conceptions more completely include understanding student resistance to exercises, predicting student difficulties with exercises, and understanding the distance between what educators are trying to teach students and what students are “hearing.”