Influences on Displaced Engineering Student Professional Identity Development: A Scoping Literature Review Across Forced Migration Contexts

Margaret E.B. Webb; Marie C. Paretti

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Equity, Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY) Technical Session 11
Tagged Divisions: Equity and Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 25
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--43696
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/43696
Download Count: 235

Paper Authors

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Margaret E.B. Webb Virginia Tech

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Margaret (Maggie) Webb is a master's and Ph.D. student in sustainable land development (civil engineering) and engineering education, respectively, at Virginia Tech. She graduated with her mechanical engineering degree from Rice University and worked for ExxonMobil as a subsea engineer and as a high school STEM teacher in a Houston charter school before starting grad school. Her research interests include supporting the needs of displaced engineering students, understanding the supports and barriers to educational continuity for engineers in a disaster context, and preparing engineering students interdisciplinarity to address disasters in their work. She works as a graduate research assistant for the Virginia Tech Disaster Resilience and Risk Management interdisciplinary graduate program, as well as for the VT Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies.

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Marie C. Paretti Virginia Tech orcid.org/0000-0002-2202-6928

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Marie C. Paretti is a Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, where she directs the Virginia Tech Engineering Communications Center (VTECC). Her research focuses on communication, collaboration, and identity in engineering.

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Abstract

An alarmingly small number of students displaced by civil conflict, natural disasters, and other stimuli of forced migration attend college or university (i.e. only 5% of refugees compared to the 41% global average), and an even smaller number are taught high-value skills in STEM and engineering due to low levels of funding and the devaluing of displaced peoples’ dignity (UNHCR Tertiary Education, 2022). Though most research is at the primary and secondary level, there is some prior scholarship at the tertiary level that suggests, for those affected by displacement who do make it into STEM education, becoming a professional in this space is acutely challenging. This is because when a student’s ability to place-make is stripped away through forced migration, they have to shape their professional identities amongst new local politics, social structures, and demographics that are often discriminatory in nature and unrelatable to domestic peers (Felix, 2020). This experience of resettlement’s impact on professional identity development is only compounded by students’ experience of the culture of engineering, dominated by the white male elite and hardness (at least in the US); here, the technical is separated from the social, and there is a lack of focus on professional development (Cech, 2013), making displaced engineering students’ experiences of professional identity development qualitatively different from their non-engineering peers. There is a breadth of literature on engineering professional identity development for traditional students, but for those affected by displacement, there is less research, so professional identity development as a form of assessment is often left unaddressed for displaced engineering students despite the notion that a positively-formed sense of identity enables retention and a sense of belonging in engineering. In response, this study investigates current research on the influences on professional identity development for displaced college students across contexts and disciplines, and it synthesizes findings in a systematic literature review. This effort extends previous inquiry because it avoids the tendency of research to be site-specific, ignoring the uniqueness of displacement and disciplinary scenarios (Webb & Paretti, 2022), and it also highlights critical ways in which a STEM learning environment might exacerbate experiences displaced students face as they develop professionally. This systematic literature review is grounded in social cognitive career theory (Lent et al., 1994) and stems from a basis of 59 articles passing different quality screens. Works span different experiences of displaced students including but not limited to refugees, asylum-seekers, DACA recipients, student migrants, other undocumented students, disaster victims, and internally displaced persons. Findings suggest that issues of identity invisibility, pressure, othering through discourse, liminality, credentialism, figured worlds, cultural conflict, instability, and limited resources influence displaced engineering students’ professional identity development and highlight the need for more engineering-specific studies of student experiences.

Citation
Format

Webb, M. E., & Paretti, M. C. (2023, June), Influences on Displaced Engineering Student Professional Identity Development: A Scoping Literature Review Across Forced Migration Contexts Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43696

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - An alarmingly small number of students displaced by civil conflict, natural disasters, and other stimuli of forced migration attend college or university (i.e. only 5% of refugees compared to the 41% global average), and an even smaller number are taught high-value skills in STEM and engineering due to low levels of funding and the devaluing of displaced peoples’ dignity (UNHCR Tertiary Education, 2022). Though most research is at the primary and secondary level, there is some prior scholarship at the tertiary level that suggests, for those affected by displacement who do make it into STEM education, becoming a professional in this space is acutely challenging. This is because when a student’s ability to place-make is stripped away through forced migration, they have to shape their professional identities amongst new local politics, social structures, and demographics that are often discriminatory in nature and unrelatable to domestic peers (Felix, 2020). This experience of resettlement’s impact on professional identity development is only compounded by students’ experience of the culture of engineering, dominated by the white male elite and hardness (at least in the US); here, the technical is separated from the social, and there is a lack of focus on professional development  (Cech, 2013), making displaced engineering students’ experiences of professional identity development qualitatively different from their non-engineering peers.
There is a breadth of literature on engineering professional identity development for traditional students, but for those affected by displacement, there is less research, so professional identity development as a form of assessment is often left unaddressed for displaced engineering students despite the notion that a positively-formed sense of identity enables retention and a sense of belonging in engineering. In response, this study investigates current research on the influences on professional identity development for displaced college students across contexts and disciplines, and it synthesizes findings in a systematic literature review. This effort extends previous inquiry because it avoids the tendency of research to be site-specific, ignoring the uniqueness of displacement and disciplinary scenarios (Webb &amp;amp; Paretti, 2022), and it also highlights critical ways in which a STEM learning environment might exacerbate experiences displaced students face as they develop professionally. 
This systematic literature review is grounded in social cognitive career theory (Lent et al., 1994) and stems from a basis of 59 articles passing different quality screens. Works span different experiences of displaced students including but not limited to refugees, asylum-seekers, DACA recipients, student migrants, other undocumented students, disaster victims, and internally displaced persons. Findings suggest that issues of identity invisibility, pressure, othering through discourse, liminality, credentialism, figured worlds, cultural conflict, instability, and limited resources influence displaced engineering students’ professional identity development and highlight the need for more engineering-specific studies of student experiences. 
AU  - Margaret E.B. Webb
AU  - Marie C. Paretti
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Influences on Displaced Engineering Student Professional Identity Development: A Scoping Literature Review Across Forced Migration Contexts
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/43696
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--43696
ER  -