For the high-flex option, register in advance. You will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Title:
What do Future Engineering Faculty believe it means to "Learn Engineering"?

Abstract:
Engineering education within the US is responsible for training and educating many engineers every year. However, this educational apparatus struggles significantly with implementing new pedagogical strategies, particularly on the national level.The task of teaching engineering students is not an easy one; engineering requires a strong breadth of foundational knowledge and then understanding how to apply that knowledge into the complexity of human contexts. Unfortunately most engineering faculty are rarely trained in the pedagogical skills required for this complex task.

Many studies have considered engineering graduate students in the context as teaching assistants (TA), though the majority of these explore TA training, utilization, or experiences. While these positions do give a student experience in delivery and class management, they rarely provide any experience with the more conceptual issues related to courses such as content development, course progression planning, or learning outcomes. TA preparation is often rather brief, rapid, and focused upon a few basic skills such as classroom management, problem solving tricks, and lab safety. We propose drawing on the rich history of Pre-service teaching preparatory programs in the US to better train future faculty while they are still graduate students, or Pre-Service Faculty. However, this population is significantly under-studied, particularly in their ideas of learning and teaching. Teaching and learning are strongly related topics, and as such to prepare PSF for their future careers, it is essential to know their current instincts and beliefs. Epistemological beliefs is a frequently leveraged framework within literature from pre-service teacher training. We define epistemology in this context as the way the PSF view knowledge and what it means to know something, truth and the possibility of an absolute fact, and justification for that knowledge. Epistemology has also been used quite often within the context of preservice teacher training as well as with several levels of engineering students, ranging from students new to engineering and college to engineering faculty.

I conducted a dual descriptive phenomenological inquiry to determine what PSF consider to be "Learning Engineering" as well as what it means to "Effectively Teach Engineering." PSF were interviewed and through data triangulation, a phenomenon structure is proposed for each of the distinct constructs. Descriptive Phenomenology is uncommon within engineering educational scholarship in the US, so I developed a modified descriptive method, drawing from numerous scholars and methodological procedures from the Husserlian school of phenomenology to construct an innovative method. PSF had complex and nuanced views of what it means to "Learn Engineering" emphasizing the applications and contextualized nature of knowledge opposed to merely conceptual learning.

PSF also described "Effectively Teaching Engineering" using very student-centered vocabulary and constructivist techniques, rather than the sage-on-a-stage model common to the classroom. These findings inform future training methods and indicate that PSF are very primed for activation of pedagogical skills, and their desired techniques are not represented in the common practices of the classroom; there is a disconnect from PSF and faculty practices commonly enacted in engineering university spaces.

Bio:
University at Buffalo PhD Candidate Duncan Mullins describes himself as an avid teacher-educator who does research. Duncan leverages qualitative inquiry (namely descriptive phenomenology) to investigate the epistemological and teaching beliefs of other engineering graduate students. He is particularly interested in students who are, like him, intent on a faculty position post-graduation, seeking to understand more about why engineering classrooms continue to perpetuate transmission learning. Duncan is also passionate about teaching and mentorship, engaging in various different venues ranging from professional development with elementary teachers of multilingual students, to his own research with graduate students, to writing consultations, and engineering robotics summer camps. Outside of work Duncan is a devoted cat dad, self-described "typical nerd," and enjoys the cool Buffalo summers and watching the snow from inside a warm apartment.

Citation:
Pre-Service Faculty Learning Processes and Teaching Approaches, DOI: 10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962688