Disciplinary Socialization in First-year STEM Students

Benjamin Goldschneider; Nicole P. Pitterson; Jennifer M. Case

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Conference: 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual On line
Publication Date: June 22, 2020
Start Date: June 22, 2020
End Date: June 26, 2021
Conference Session: Identity, Culture, and Socialization
Tagged Division: Liberal Education/Engineering & Society
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 13
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--34468
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/34468
Download Count: 457

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Paper Authors

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Benjamin Goldschneider Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

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Benjamin Goldschneider is a PhD student in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. His research interests include engineering identity development, socialization, student motivation, and student competencies.

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Nicole P. Pitterson Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University orcid.org/0000-0001-9221-1574

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Nicole is an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. Prior to joining VT, Dr. Pitterson was a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University. She holds a PhD in Engineering Education from Purdue University and other degrees in Manufacturing Engineering from Western Illinois University and a B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Technology, Jamaica. Her research interests are exploring students' disciplinary identity through engagement with knowledge, curriculum design, assessment and evaluation and teaching for conceptual understanding.

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Jennifer M. Case Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

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Jennifer Case is Head and Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She holds an honorary position at the University of Cape Town. Her research on the student experience of learning, focusing mainly on science and engineering education, has been published across a range of journal articles in higher education and her recent book, Researching student learning in higher education: A social realist approach published in 2013 by Routledge. She holds an academic development post in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCT, and teaches in the undergraduate programme there. She is a coordinating editor for the international journal Higher Education and a co-editor for the Routledge/SRHE series Research into Higher Education.

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Abstract

Whether knowingly or not, students choose to become part of a disciplinary community when they choose their major. This membership comes alongside a set of written and unwritten rules, expectations, and responsibilities. The process by which students learn these membership requirements, referred to as socialization, is a socially driven affair. Students may gain this knowledge from peers, senior students, mentors, or faculty, all of whom constitute socializing agents. For many students, this process can begin before they even arrive at school through interactions with their parents, teachers, or college faculty. The information and opinions that students gain from these pre-college interactions have potentially significant effects on their choice of university, major, and specialization. Once students arrive to their university, their socialization experiences can have continued effects not just on their academic choices, but on their social and professional lives as well. Furthermore, students begin to make decisions regarding their own role as socializing agents towards junior students and their peers through mentoring and leadership positions. These decisions, and subsequently the socializing interactions that help to motivate them, have a significant impact on students’ identity and sense of belonging within their discipline. There is an established link in engineering education literature between identity and persistence and as a result, understanding these socialization experiences and the identity development that follows holds substantial importance for engineering educators and administrators alike. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate the role of interaction with socializing agents for first-year STEM students at a large research-intensive institution in the Southeast United States. The student population for this study consists of first-year chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering students. This work seeks to add to an existing body of literature on socialization with an exploration of the socialization experiences of fifteen students, as well as expanding the literature by comparing the socialization experiences of engineering and science students in their first year of undergraduate study. This cross-comparative angle is noticeably absent from the literature and holds potentially significant insight into the different socialization options and experiences among various groups of STEM students and the influence that this has on their choice of discipline. Understanding these differences may also provide some understanding of how the disciplinary cultures vary within STEM and the impact that this has on students. This knowledge provides a basis for reflection and potential improvements in STEM departments around the United States. As such, this work provides benefits to STEM faculty, administrators, and students themselves as they work to find their own place within their newly acquired disciplinary communities. With national calls for greater numbers of STEM graduates juxtaposed against less-than-desirable retention rates, furthering the understanding of how students arrive at their choice of major is a crucial first step towards improving the throughput of STEM programs nationwide.

Citation
Format

Goldschneider, B., & Pitterson, N. P., & Case, J. M. (2020, June), Disciplinary Socialization in First-year STEM Students Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34468

TY - CPAPER
AB - Whether knowingly or not, students choose to become part of a disciplinary community when they choose their major. This membership comes alongside a set of written and unwritten rules, expectations, and responsibilities. The process by which students learn these membership requirements, referred to as socialization, is a socially driven affair. Students may gain this knowledge from peers, senior students, mentors, or faculty, all of whom constitute socializing agents. For many students, this process can begin before they even arrive at school through interactions with their parents, teachers, or college faculty. The information and opinions that students gain from these pre-college interactions have potentially significant effects on their choice of university, major, and specialization. Once students arrive to their university, their socialization experiences can have continued effects not just on their academic choices, but on their social and professional lives as well. Furthermore, students begin to make decisions regarding their own role as socializing agents towards junior students and their peers through mentoring and leadership positions. These decisions, and subsequently the socializing interactions that help to motivate them, have a significant impact on students’ identity and sense of belonging within their discipline. There is an established link in engineering education literature between identity and persistence and as a result, understanding these socialization experiences and the identity development that follows holds substantial importance for engineering educators and administrators alike.
The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate the role of interaction with socializing agents for first-year STEM students at a large research-intensive institution in the Southeast United States. The student population for this study consists of first-year chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering students. This work seeks to add to an existing body of literature on socialization with an exploration of the socialization experiences of fifteen students, as well as expanding the literature by comparing the socialization experiences of engineering and science students in their first year of undergraduate study. This cross-comparative angle is noticeably absent from the literature and holds potentially significant insight into the different socialization options and experiences among various groups of STEM students and the influence that this has on their choice of discipline. Understanding these differences may also provide some understanding of how the disciplinary cultures vary within STEM and the impact that this has on students. This knowledge provides a basis for reflection and potential improvements in STEM departments around the United States. As such, this work provides benefits to STEM faculty, administrators, and students themselves as they work to find their own place within their newly acquired disciplinary communities. With national calls for greater numbers of STEM graduates juxtaposed against less-than-desirable retention rates, furthering the understanding of how students arrive at their choice of major is a crucial first step towards improving the throughput of STEM programs nationwide.

AU - Benjamin Goldschneider
AU - Nicole P. Pitterson
AU - Jennifer M. Case
CY - Virtual On line
DA - 2020/06/22
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Disciplinary Socialization in First-year STEM Students
UR - https://peer.asee.org/34468
DO - 10.18260/1-2--34468
ER -