Role Enactment and the Early Formation of Engineering Identity: Pathways to Engineering through Hands-on Education

• In Event: Educational Transformation under Uncertainty: Policy Innovation, Institutional Adaptation, and Pathways to Inclusion

Proposal

Persistent inequities in access to engineering pathways continue to mirror broader social divisions. While engineering is positioned globally as central to economic growth and technological innovation, opportunities to participate in the field remain unevenly distributed by gender, race, geography, and socioeconomic status (National Science Board, National Science Foundation. 2024). Such disparities shape not only individual life chances but also reproduce systemic inequities. This study examines how secondary school students begin to take up engineering identities, and how opportunities to “try on” engineering roles might expand participation in ways that counter these divides.
Our analysis builds on Godwin’s (2016) framework of engineering identity, which conceptualizes three core components: interest, recognition, and competence/performance beliefs. We extend this model by introducing role enactment, defined as the active adoption of the practices and dispositions associated with engineers. Role enactment has been theorized in fields such as teacher education and medicine as an important mechanism of professional identity formation (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009, Jarvis-Selinger et al., 2012). Yet, in engineering education, its role has not been systematically examined. We argue that role enactment operates as a bridge, linking tentative interests and competencies with tangible, socially validated experiences of becoming an engineer.
The study draws on data from a longitudinal, cross-national investigation of youth enrolled in the Next Engineers Engineering Academy, a global initiative supported by the GE Vernova and GE Aerospace Foundations. Academy is a three-year program for secondary school students (ages 15–18) that combines engineering design challenges, career readiness activities, and mentoring by professional engineers. Between 2022 and 2025, we conducted 100 interviews with 51 students across four sites—Cincinnati (USA), Greenville (USA), Johannesburg (South Africa), and Staffordshire (England). Most students were interviewed twice, once upon entry into the program and once in their third year. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was conducted using both literature-informed etic codes and inductively derived emic codes, refined through collaborative team coding.
Findings indicate that engineering identity development during adolescence is both fragile and contingent. Students’ early interests often emerged as broad affinities for science, mathematics, or problem-solving, which were later reframed as engineering through program exposure. Competence was defined not only by academic achievement but also by persistence, collaboration, and adaptability—capacities that students came to see as integral to engineering. Recognition, whether institutional (e.g., awards, program selection) or interpersonal (e.g., encouragement from parents or teachers), played a formative role by affirming students as potential engineers. Most notably, role enactment surfaced as a key mechanism through which students consolidated these identity components. Through hands-on design work, public presentations, and collaborative projects, students were able to embody engineering identities before fully committing to them. These experiences provided a form of provisional belonging, enabling students to test their fit within the field and to see engineering as a plausible future self.
By foregrounding role enactment, this study advances theoretical understandings of professional identity development in engineering and highlights how identity is formed not solely through perception but through practice. It also demonstrates the importance of structured opportunities for secondary students to enact engineering roles, particularly for those historically excluded from the field. Such experiences do more than develop technical skills; they cultivate recognition and belonging, which are essential to inclusive participation. Positioning identity development within the broader context of social division underscores the stakes of engineering education for peace and justice. Exclusion from engineering pathways reproduces inequities that fragment societies, while early opportunities to enact engineering identities may help foster cohesion by broadening who can participate in shaping technological futures.

Authors

• Elizabeth Adelman, FHI 360

• Caitlin Kim