From Engineering Student to Engineering Professional: Analyzing Discursive Engineering Identity Enacted in Mock Job Interviews

Background: Engineering programs increasingly embrace pedagogies intended to engender professional competencies valued and recognized in practice. However, without appropriate support students may not recognize the professionally relevant aspects of their experiences, leading to a confounding of their “engineering student” and “professional engineer” identities. We observed this phenomenon in a prior study in which professionals evaluated student responses from two different mock job interviews, corresponding to two different project experiences.

Purpose: Motivated by the prior study, in this work we explored the enacted language of students in those mock interviews. The research question explored here is: How do undergraduate engineers position their engineering identities with respect to different project-based educational experiences?

Method: We derived a discourse identity model based on Gee’s building tasks of language through iterative coding of the mock job interview transcripts of 12 engineering undergraduates. The resulting model was used to conduct a comparative analysis of students’ first and second interview responses. All study participants were students at a large public, research intensive institution in the Northeastern United States.

Results: Analysis showed that most participants exhibited a shift in their discursive identities, from more academic (“engineering student”) in the first interview to more professional (“professional engineer”) in the second. This shift is captured by enactment of language related to building tasks of identity (i.e., roles and titles enacted through language), practices (i.e., activities and tasks relevant to a context enacted through language), and significance (i.e., the importance or value of something or someone as rendered through language).

Conclusions: Findings of this exploratory study show that students may confound their “engineering student” and developing “professional engineer” identities in ways that undermine their bid to be seen as a professional. Based on our findings we discuss implications related to the design and facilitation of educational experiences that might better support students’ recognition of their (professional) engineering identity production. These include a need to support students in 1) recognizing and foregrounding professionally relevant forms of knowledge, 2) understanding the range of technical and non-technical competencies important to a professional engineering identity, and 3) reflecting on their engagement and the significance of their contributions in project- and team-based experiences. We conclude that such support might be enabled through discursive interventions that foster reflection, like writing and interviews.