Understanding the Pathways of Students With Normative Attitudes in Engineering

Engineering culture has traditionally limited rather than fostered diversity in engineering. This culture serves to limit representation of diverse individuals within engineering and create environments that are detrimental to creativity, problem solving, and productivity. One way to address this issue is to understand how students align themselves with the cultural values of engineering and navigate their pathways through earning their engineering degrees. We present an analysis of ten participants previously identified through attitudinal survey data as belonging to a “normative” attitudinal group of engineering majors. These individuals provide a way to understand students who are attitudinally similar to the accepted norms and practices of what it means to be an engineer. Results indicate the importance of social resource experiences in engineering and on the widely held belief that success in engineering is born out of hard work, consistent with other studies. These findings outline ways in which engineering culture can shape student attitudes and actions towards learning engineering. Understanding this group may provide ways to change engineering culture to be more inclusive for all students. Our research begins to describe particular cultural practices and values to improve the recruitment, training, and retention of a broader population of engineering students.