Co-Constructing Faculty Critical Consciousness In Engineering Education

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The overall goals of this project are twofold: to advance understanding of the system of privileges and advantages in engineering education and to create a professional development program to help engineering faculty develop the skills to critically question social, cultural, historical, and political effects of this privilege in engineering. Engineering education is built on a system that historically privileges and normalizes the values, beliefs, experiences, and perspectives of particular identities that guide the work of the field. While there has been substantial research into the masculinity of engineering, there has been limited research about the role of privilege in engineering. This project will generate new knowledge by focusing on three research questions: (1) How and in what ways does systemic racism manifest in engineering education? (2) What strategies can be used to effectively help engineering faculty develop their critical consciousness? and (3) How and in what ways does the growth of critical consciousness support faculty to identify and challenge the systemic barriers preventing racial equity in engineering? The research will support engineering faculty to interrogate the associated systemic barriers preventing racial equity.This four-year project will examine guided, reflective journaling of faculty experiences in engineering and field notes from observations of the researchers' own professional engineering settings (e.g. faculty meetings, classroom observations). These artifacts will serve as the baseline for creating the faculty development program during Year 2. During Years 3-4, the program will be implemented and revised with two cohorts of 16 engineering faculty each, in a recursive co-construction of critical consciousness and scripts of race and racial identity. This project will result in the creation of immersive experiences for engineering faculty that serve as a vehicle for the development of critical consciousness, which is the foundation to enact changes that will address racial inequity in engineering and provide a model that supports practices to challenge privilege in engineering spaces. This collaborative project is funded by the Racial Equity in STEM Education program (EHR Racial Equity). The program supports projects that promote racial equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and workforce development through research and practice. Awarded projects center the voices, knowledge, and experiences of the individuals, communities, and institutions most impacted by the inequities caused by systemic racism in STEM fields. This program aligns with NSF’s core value of supporting outstanding researchers and innovative thinkers from across the Nation's diversity of demographic groups, regions, and types of organizations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.