This study focuses on students who have diverse attitudes, beliefs, and mindsets, i.e., latent diversity, to understand how engineering education and culture may support or hinder students' identity development in and out of the classroom. In this paper, we use the identity trajectory theory to explore students' stories about their background, pathway into engineering, and first-year engineering experiences. We are adapting the three strands of this framework (institutional, intellectual, and networking) in addition to identifying additional or supplementary strands to make meaning of the students' identity trajectories in engineering. We probed the aforementioned strands through narrative interviews with 26 engineering students. This preliminary work describes the challenges and affordances of translating this framework into narrative research with undergraduates and provides new ways of understanding identity development.

Brianna Benedict, Dina Verdin, Jacqueline A Rohde, Harriet Brown, Rachel Baker, Aaron Thielmeyer and Allison Godwin (Purdue University, USA)

10.18.19: 10:30-Noon, Room 9

Keywords – identities, identify development, undergraduate engineering students