Looking Through Students’ Eyes to Build Faculty’s Empathic Understanding: The Figured Worlds of the Audio for Inclusion Project Narratives

Background: When thinking about inclusivity in engineering from an anthropological lens, faculty and students move through various cultural, or figured, worlds. Cultural worlds bring with them norms or rules and they frame meaningful identities for people inside the worlds. Exploring student experiences through this lens can help provide insight, particularly for faculty, on student experiences of marginalization and inclusivity.

Purpose: We investigated the cultural worlds highlighted by student participant narratives to provide insight for faculty regarding broadening participation in engineering educational contexts.

Method: As part of a larger study focused on audio dissemination of student narratives for faculty development, interviews were conducted with 21 undergraduate engineering student participants across the United States. The interview protocol focused on their identities in engineering education contexts, perceptions of engineering culture, and feedback for faculty. We conducted a narrative analysis and created 10 student narratives that were distinct from one another in terms of the demographic identities and dimensions of engineering culture that were highlighted during the interviews.

Results: Some cultural worlds highlighted by students were primarily shared with faculty but subjectively experienced by students, including views of professors, pedagogy, and course policies. Others, including student mental health, physical health, and outside obligations or constraints, were largely kept from faculty view; while faculty generally knew of these worlds, they were primarily described by students as separate from engineering. Focusing on worlds as an analytical lens, we highlight aspects of the narratives that may expand a faculty member’s typical understanding of students.

Conclusions: We conclude that understanding the private and shared worlds of students is a core part of inclusivity, and faculty would benefit from proactive steps to demonstrate willingness and capacity to listen to students. We call for pragmatic broadening participation research that conceptualizes and aims to ameliorate the communication gaps between faculty and marginalized students.