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Zooming Out from the Struggling Individual Student: An Account of the Cultural Construction of Engineering Ability in an Undergraduate Programming Class
Author(s) -
Secules Stephen,
Gupta Ayush,
Elby Andrew,
Turpen Chandra
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of engineering education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.896
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 2168-9830
pISSN - 1069-4730
DOI - 10.1002/jee.20191
Subject(s) - construct (python library) , context (archaeology) , class (philosophy) , ethnography , zoom , meaning (existential) , pedagogy , mathematics education , field (mathematics) , engineering education , participant observation , sociology , psychology , computer science , engineering , social science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , mechanical engineering , paleontology , lens (geology) , anthropology , petroleum engineering , pure mathematics , psychotherapist , biology , programming language
Background To explain educational problems such as student attrition, engineering education literature often focuses on the characteristics of individuals. In 2006, Ray McDermott and Hervé Varenne called for examining the “cultural construction” of educational problems, uncovering how multiple actors create and inscribe meaning to the educational problem. Purpose We apply the cultural construction framework to examine how the educational problem of a student being “not cut out for engineering” is constructed within the context of a specific electrical engineering course. We focus on culturally taken‐for‐granted course structures, practices, and interactions, all of which produce the local enactment of this common educational problem. Method We used ethnographic methods, including field‐noted participant observations, one‐on‐one participant interviews, and video‐recorded student work on lab assignments. Coordinating multiple data streams enabled us to question explanations couched in terms of individual ability and background, and to illustrate how ability hierarchies were constructed in the educational context. Results Our findings illustrate how several mundane and seemingly innocuous aspects of engineering classrooms add up to construct the educational problem of our focal student as “not cut out” for engineering. Contributions to this construction included lecture seating positions, interactional norms in lecture and lab, and labels made meaningful through institutional and interactional processes. Conclusions The forces at play in constructing educational problems for students are deeply embedded in institutions, disciplines, and society, making it difficult to generate a simple list of instructional interventions. We highlight cultural construction analysis as a potentially fruitful orientation for researchers and practitioners to find the particular sites and tools for local intervention.