We attend to the emotional experience of engineering students by studying professional shame, that is, a painful emotional state that occurs when one perceives themselves to have failed to meet socially constructed expectations or standards that are relevant to their identity in a professional domain. We examined the lived experiences of professional shame using intensive interviews with White male engineering students from two universities in the United States (n = 9). We used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to examine the interview transcripts and generate psychological patterns of the lived experience.

The findings demonstrated four themes related to how participants experienced professional shame. First, they negotiated their global, or holistic, identities in the engineering domain. Second, they experienced threats to their identities within professional contexts. Third, participants responded to threats in ways that gave prominence to the standards they perceived themselves to have failed. Finally, they repaired their identities through reframing shame experiences and seeking social connection. The findings demonstrate that the professional shame phenomenon is interwoven with professional identity development. In experiencing professional shame, White male students might reproduce the shame experience for themselves and others. This finding has important implications for the standards against which members from underrepresented groups may compare themselves, and provides insight into the social construction of engineering cultures by dominant groups.

Speaker Bio

Dr. James Huff is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education and an Honors College Faculty Fellow at Harding University. He conducts transdisciplinary research on identity that lies at the nexus of applied psychology and engineering education, examining how hidden phenomena drive individual behavior that shapes engineering cultures. Dr. Huff directs the Beyond Professional Identity (BPI) research lab, and in this role, he has mentored undergraduate students, doctoral students, and academic professionals from more than 10 academic disciplines in using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as a qualitative research method to examine identity in a variety of contexts. Additionally, he teaches engineering courses in human-centered design that are in partnership with local community organizations. Dr. Huff received his Ph.D. in Engineering Education and M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University. Dr. Huff also received his B.S. in Computer Engineering from Harding University.