The Complexity of Imagining an Expansive Engineering Learning Space: The Case of an Urban Classroom

• In Event: 45.032 - Educational Dignity in Making and Engineering Spaces Developing Close Accounts of Expansive Pedagogy, Learning, and Self-Determination

Abstract

In this research, we discuss the ways in which power relations are constructed, co-constructed, and reconstructed within an urban, secondary engineering course. Specifically, we explore the complex processes involved with re-imagining this powered space as an expansive engineering learning environment, where students are extended opportunities to restructure the activities and practices that are valued within the learning environment (Engestrӧm, 2007). Such a transformative space would afford students from historically marginalized communities opportunities for broadening meanings of what it means to “do engineering” and to be “a good engineer (student)” in efforts of fostering more inclusive and interesting engineering learning environments. Foregrounding Gutiérrez, Rymes, and Laron’s (1995) constructs of script and counterscript, this study examines the interaction between two competing conceptualizations of expansive engineering and participation in an engineering community of practice.

Conducted within a 10th grade Introduction to Engineering within an urban school context, this study utilized ethnographic field notes and semi-structured interviews (i.e., students and teacher) to explore the following research questions: (1) what classroom script informed students’ participation in an introduction to engineering course and (2) how did students appropriate, resist, and/or transform the script that was communicated?

Findings indicate that the teacher’s approach to assessing students’ engineering competencies communicated a particular view of “doing engineering” that limited students’ opportunities for meaningful peer interaction and dialogue. Specifically, the classroom script (Gutiérrez et al., 1995) included expecting students to “correctly” respond to teacher-directed questions, accurately document engineering processes and vocabulary in engineering notebooks, and compete during intra-team design challenges. In contrast, students’ conceptualizations of “doing engineering,” or their counterscript, were in line with practices outlined in engineering habits of mind literature (Lucas & Hanson, 2016), and included collaboration, resourcefulness, and curiosity. Despite intentions of fostering an expansive engineering classroom, these findings underscore the complexities of unpacking the power dynamics in conceptualizing the ideas of “doing engineering” versus “doing school.” Although students attempted to distance themselves from the expectations presented through the classroom script, their co-constructed counterscript still lived within a larger classroom context where powered relationships played a vital role in their ability to actually transform activities and practices.

Authors

• Christopher George Wright, Drexel University

• Jessica Cellitti, Drexel University