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A Look Into the Lived Experiences of Incorporating Inclusive Teaching Practices in Engineering Education

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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

Care and Inclusive Teaching

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

17

DOI

10.18260/1-2--35067

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/35067

Download Count

639

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Paper Authors

biography

Kenya Z. Mejia University of Washington

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Kenya Z. Mejia is a second year PhD student at the University of Washington in the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. Her work focuses on diversity and inclusion in engineering education focusing on engineering design education.

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biography

Jennifer A. Turns University of Washington

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Jennifer Turns is a Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. She is interested in all aspects of engineering education, including how to support engineering students in reflecting on experience, how to help engineering educators make effective teaching decisions, and the application of ideas from complexity science to the challenges of engineering education.

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Abstract

This research paper contributes to the field's understanding on how to support educators in creating a diverse and inclusive engineering education environment. Even with many conversations around diversity and inclusion, recruitment and retention of underrepresented students continues to be a concern. Although much has been learned, it is difficult to put into practice the research backed methods to improve the diversity and inclusion of our teaching. Our work looks at the lived experiences of university level engineering educators who have been incorporating diverse and inclusive practices in their teaching. Through highlighting lived experiences, this work seeks to provide insights into the realities and difficulties of incorporating inclusive practices into one’s teaching. We used an open-ended interview protocol and conducted a thematic analysis on the transcribed data. We report the range of practices participants discussed, in order to give context to some of the lived experiences. We share realities around three themes: Community Support, Learning from Experiences, and The Work is Hard. Despite the amount of research on diversity and inclusion in the context of engineering education, we recognize incorporating these practices in teaching brings its own set of challenges. Therefore, we must not only understand what diversity and inclusion means, but also the context educators are working in and how they are experiencing this work of incorporating diverse and inclusive practices.

Mejia, K. Z., & Turns, J. A. (2020, June), A Look Into the Lived Experiences of Incorporating Inclusive Teaching Practices in Engineering Education Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35067

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