Date of Award

Spring 5-3-2024

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

Advisor

Asli Sezen-Barrie

Second Committee Member

Karissa Tilbury

Third Committee Member

Allison Godwin

Additional Committee Members

MacKenzie Stetzer

Nuri Emanetoglu

Abstract

The engineering student educational experience is commonly assumed to be homogenous; however engineering disciplines have been characterized as having unique cultures and traditions. Previous studies have observed that how engineering students act, communicate, and ultimately see themselves as engineers, is dependent on localized sociocultural factors in which learning and engineering work takes place. In addition, the enculturation processes of undergraduate students within domain-specific engineering programs are distinct to individual engineering domains based on the needs, knowledge, and practices of associated professional domains. However, there is a lack of investigations regarding the ways in which members (students, faculty) experience and engage with discipline-specific cultures, and how these experiences are related to student engineering identity development. This study aims to characterize the disciplinary-specific culture of a biomedical engineering (BME) program from multiple perspectives (students, instructors), and understand its role in students’ engineering identity development. This case study was conducted within a BME program at a research- intensive university located within the rural locale at north-eastern United States.

The primary data source was ethnographic interviews (45-60 minutes) conducted with senior undergraduate students (n = 8) and faculty members (n = 7). In addition, student surveys, departmental documents, and fieldnotes from classroom observations were collected as supplementary data about the culture of the program. The transcripts were analyzed qualitatively using the constructs of Engestrӧm’s cultural historical activity (e.g., cultural norms, tools, community) and role identity theories as primary coding categories, with inductive coding (constant comparative) utilized to generate subcodes. Findings highlight the importance of student interactions with local environmental factors (peers, faculty and coursework) within the BME program as key components in how they describe the discipline and view themselves as BME. Through these interactions, students and faculty underline epistemic norms of their discipline. Students frequently used “jack of all trades” to describe BME and the utility of their knowledge base. Faculty indicated program intent to provide students with disciplinary knowledge/skills relevant to bioinstrumentation, biomechanics, and biomaterials. These findings suggest faculty should consider the messaging about BME across programmatic experiences, and to measure discrepancies between intent and student outcome. The discussions provide future opportunity to improve alignment among subdiscipline-relevant projects with the overall aims of the program.

Download

Share