The Impact of Gender Identity on Early-Career Engineer's Perception of Expertise

Caroline Bolton; Elif Miskioglu; Madeline Roth

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: ERM: Identity Impacts (Identity Part 2)
Page Count: 9
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41104
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41104
Download Count: 150

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I am an early-career engineering education scholar and educator. I hold a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (with Genetics minor) from Iowa State University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from The Ohio State University. My early Ph.D. work focused on the development of bacterial biosensors capable of screening pesticides for specifically targeting the malaria vector mosquito, Anopheles gambiae. As a result, my diverse background also includes experience in infectious disease and epidemiology, providing crucial exposure to the broader context of engineering problems and their subsequent solutions.

These diverse experiences and a growing passion for improving engineering education prompted me to change career paths and become a scholar of engineering education. As an educator, I am committed to challenging my students to uncover new perspectives and dig deeper into the context of the societal problems engineering is intended to solve. As a scholar, I seek to not only contribute original theoretical research to the field, but work to bridge the theory-to-practice gap in engineering education by serving as an ambassador for empirically driven educational practices.

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Madeline Roth Bucknell University

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Abstract

This full paper aims to characterize early career (0-5 years of experience) practicing engineers perception of personal expertise with respect to their gender identity. This study is an extension of previous work that examined the relationship between gender identity and perceptions of expertise among engineers’ with 6+ years of experience. The results from that study suggest that descriptions of expertise are influenced by factors of identity. For example, we found that women tended to claim a single domain of expertise, while men were more likely to report multiple. Here we explore a sample of early career engineers and contrast findings with our previous work. We hypothesize that early career engineers will be more hesitant to claim expertise because of their relative lack of experience and that these perceptions will further be shaped by gender identity.

This is a qualitative study in which we have conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 participants that have five years of practicing engineering experience or less. The interview protocol is for a larger study examining intersections between engineering intuition and expertise; this full paper will focus on the “perceptions of expertise” piece of the protocol. The full protocol aims to uncover (1) academic and professional background, (2) perceptions of expertise, (3) decision-making approaches, and (4) perceptions of engineering intuition. Qualitative coding of the transcribed interviews uses a previously developed engineering codebook. We analyze emergent patterns within code occurrences against participant’s self-reported gender identity. Furthermore, we compare results of this study with results from the previous study in order to examine emergent themes within each sample population and any existing overlaps between the two career stages.

The overarching goal of this study is to understand how gender identity influences perceptions of personal expertise among early career engineers. Gaining an understanding of these relationships will provide insight into how and when practicing engineers begin to perceive themselves as experts and whether that timing is influenced by gender identity, contributing knowledge to understanding expertise in workforce development.

Citation
Format

Bolton, C., & Miskioglu, E., & Roth, M. (2022, August), The Impact of Gender Identity on Early-Career Engineer's Perception of Expertise Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41104

TY - CPAPER
AB - This full paper aims to characterize early career (0-5 years of experience) practicing engineers perception of personal expertise with respect to their gender identity. This study is an extension of previous work that examined the relationship between gender identity and perceptions of expertise among engineers’ with 6+ years of experience. The results from that study suggest that descriptions of expertise are influenced by factors of identity. For example, we found that women tended to claim a single domain of expertise, while men were more likely to report multiple. Here we explore a sample of early career engineers and contrast findings with our previous work. We hypothesize that early career engineers will be more hesitant to claim expertise because of their relative lack of experience and that these perceptions will further be shaped by gender identity.

This is a qualitative study in which we have conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 participants that have five years of practicing engineering experience or less. The interview protocol is for a larger study examining intersections between engineering intuition and expertise; this full paper will focus on the “perceptions of expertise” piece of the protocol. The full protocol aims to uncover (1) academic and professional background, (2) perceptions of expertise, (3) decision-making approaches, and (4) perceptions of engineering intuition. Qualitative coding of the transcribed interviews uses a previously developed engineering codebook. We analyze emergent patterns within code occurrences against participant’s self-reported gender identity. Furthermore, we compare results of this study with results from the previous study in order to examine emergent themes within each sample population and any existing overlaps between the two career stages.

The overarching goal of this study is to understand how gender identity influences perceptions of personal expertise among early career engineers. Gaining an understanding of these relationships will provide insight into how and when practicing engineers begin to perceive themselves as experts and whether that timing is influenced by gender identity, contributing knowledge to understanding expertise in workforce development.
AU - Caroline Bolton
AU - Elif Miskioglu
AU - Madeline Roth
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - The Impact of Gender Identity on Early-Career Engineer's Perception of Expertise
UR - https://peer.asee.org/41104
DO - 10.18260/1-2--41104
ER -