Developing Engineering Identity in an Introductory Engineering Course: A Multi-Case Analysis

: Research in engineering education has identified several factors relevant to the development of students’ identity as engineers. Here we examine the engineering identity of undergraduate engineering students after an introductory engineering course. The specific research question explored here is: "How do engineering students in an introductory engineering course interpret competence, performance, and recognition in relation to their identities as engineers?” We used a modified engineering identity framework to explore the development of engineering identity within the undergraduate engineering context through a multiple case study approach. Six students majoring in engineering participated in the study. The students had divergent perspectives on what it meant to be competent as an engineer. In all cases, students connected both competence and performance as an engineer with persistence. At this introductory stage, self-recognition as an engineering person took center stage for each student. All were able to identify themselves strongly as an engineering person. The findings add to the current understandings about the development of engineering identity, and suggest that engineering identity may be critically important in conversations about the steps faculty may take in working with students to promote increased retention of undergraduate students in engineering.


Introduction
STEM fields are historically known for their support of a meritocracy and for grading practices based primarily on high-stakes multiple choice assessments (Blickenstaff, 2005;Seymour & Hewitt, 1997;Tonso, 2014), reflecting a traditionalist view of education. Seymour & Hewitt (1997) described the competitive nature of this context: students are expected to sink or swim while navigating courses designed to "weed out" students. This context makes a sense of belonging challenging for students who do not fit in with the dominant norms and values (Carlone & Johnson, 2007) or whose ways of thinking may differ.
Meanwhile, students in engineering majors have a high attrition and engineering remains a STEM field still unable to achieve gender parity (Bastalich et al., 2007;National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2021). Although high academic standards are often blamed for this high attrition in the engineering major, the culture and tradition found within engineering classrooms may be a significant factor (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997;Tonso, 2014).

Recent research in engineering education has
suggested the importance of examining constructs, such as students' sense of identity to better understand how the culture of engineering education influences student outcomes.
Research has demonstrated that identification of oneself as an engineer, or not, has an impact on the persistence of an individual in the fieldwhether as a professional or as a student (Patrick, Borrego, & Abstract: Research in engineering education has identified several factors relevant to the development of Prybutiok, 2018;Pierrakos et al., 2009;Seymour & Hewitt, 1997;Tonso, 2006). Thus, the formation of an engineering identity is critical for retention. The impact of engineering contexts on students' engineering identities has become recognized on a larger scale in recent decades, and a body of research has grown in attempts to understand what professional identity means for engineering students, how it forms, and to develop measures for studying the construct in this particular context.
In this study, we explore students' engineering identity after an introductory engineering course (a 200-level Statics course). Part of a larger study , this exploration includes descriptions of cases, as well as comparisons between cases, to explore frequent themes that may transcend each individual case and provide the additional perspective of cross-commonalities. This research is informed by the following research question: How do engineering students in an introductory engineering course interpret competence, performance, and recognition in relation to their identities as engineers?

Literature Review
Here we make the case for exploring first year students' engineering identity. First, we discuss the current understandings about science and engineering identity (see Gray, Tuchscherer, Gray, 2018 for a review). We include science identity as it is foundational to recent work in engineering identity.
We then move to the engineering context and outline the current understandings about the influence of the context on students as they move through the preprofessional program, and demonstrate a need for further identity study within the engineering context. Finally, we provide a framework for this study.
Early work on identity resulted in two distinct views of the construct. A psychological orientation to identity saw it as something that was stable and consistent (Freud, 1961;Kuhn & McPartland, 1954) while a sociological orientation described identity as dynamic and situated (Erikson, 1968;Goffman, 1963).
Building on these early ideas, more contemporary views of identity have led to the conclusion that an individual's identity is dynamic and may have many facets that are relevant in different situations (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009;Gee, 2000;Stryker & Burke, 2000;Tajfel & Turner, 1986;Wenger, 1998).
These views of identity as multi-faceted and dynamic informed the understanding of science and engineering identity.

Science Identity
Science as a profession offers a unique lens for viewing identity, as it is a context that comes with a distinctive set of historical norms, values, and beliefs.
The historical culture of science includes an emphasis on meritocracy (Blickenstaff, 2005;Seymour & Hewitt, 1997), and science departments at the university level, which serve to train pre-professionals in the science content, reflect this culture. Carlone & Johnson (2007) pointed out that the existing literature offers little explanation for how students experience and succeed in the context of scientific disciplines, and they proposed identity as an analytic lens for exploring these issues. They drew on previous literature around identity role theory (e.g., Stets & Burke, 2000) to create a model for exploring identity development in the sciences. The Carlone & Johnson framework comprises three dimensionscompetence, performance, and recognitionthat interconnect to form a professional identity. Figure 1 provides a visual model of how these dimensions interconnect.
Competence involves the individual's knowledge and understanding of science content and the ability to apply this knowledge to scientific contexts.
Performance is the way that an individual makes visible their knowledge of scientific practices; a social context that includes an audience is necessary for performance.
Recognition involves the acknowledgement from the self, and others, that an individual is a "science person" (p. 1191); this often occurs through the performance of knowledge and skills in a social context. These dimensions, together, influence a person's professional identity.

Figure 1
Carlone & Johnson (2007)  Among the factors identified, engineering-related experiences were found in all three categories of factors. One set of these factors, professional aspects of engineering, has been shown to be predictive of undergraduates' engineering identity (Choe et al, 2019). In particular, three aspects of the profession: tinkering, design, and analysis were shown to be predictive of engineering identity (Choe et al, 2019).
Further research into the professional aspects of engineering showed that there is a gender gap in affinity related to five out of six of these aspects (Patrick et al, 2021). The three aspects shown to be predictive of engineering identity were rated significantly higher by men while two aspects (project management and framing/solving problems) were more highly rated by women (Patrick et al, 2021).
Collaboration, the sixth professional aspect, did not show a significant affinity difference between men and women (Patrick et al, 2021). These differences may help to explain the gender gap in engineering identity (Patrick et al, 2021). In that same study, Patrick et al. found that, unlike gender, race was not a significant predictor of engineering identity.
Additional studies have examined the role of mathematics and science identities on engineering identity (Cass et al, 2011;Patrick, Borrego, & Seepersad, 2018) and persistence in engineering (Pierrakos, 2009 offered an opportunity to explore this issue through its components' external orientation (performance, recognition, and --to a lesser degree --competence, require validation from others). Given our focus on providing a qualitative understanding of these dimensions, we kept the three dimensions separate for our analysis rather than combining performance and competence as has been done in some previous quantitative work. We used these three components to guide the thematic coding process of the qualitative data.

Context
This study occurred at a mid-size, public university in the southwestern United States. Data collection took place near the end of an introductory 200-level Statics course taught in the engineering department. Statics is widely considered by students to be a "weed-out" course: a rigorous class with high rates of low grades and failures that drives large numbers of students out of the major. It is the first engineering course required by all civil, mechanical, and environmental engineering majors at the university.

Participants
We identify as middle-class, cis-gender white men and women. Four of us have graduate training as educational researchers, one as a civil engineer, and we all share research interests and perform scholarly work in STEM education and gender. Three of us are mid-career researchers and scholars, one of us is in our early career, and one is a doctoral student. We all have experience teaching undergraduates, and one of us has taught in undergraduate engineering programs.

Research Design
This study involved a qualitative multi-case study (Stake, 2006) that investigated more than one case of students' engineering identity. Each case was constructed based on the experiences of an individual student. These cases were investigated to create deep understandings about the students' emerging engineering identity through descriptive case study.
A comparison of these cases explores common themes that transcend each individual case and provides the benefit of an "understanding of the aggregate" (Stake, 2006, p. 39).

Data Collection
Individual interviews were conducted with the six participants at the end of the semester. The questions driving the interviews emerged from the Carlone and Johnson (2007) identity framework (Appendix A). As 158 | G R A Y , G R A Y , C A N I P E , A R M F I E L D , & T U C H S C H E R E R the purpose of these interviews was to explore students' perceptions and feelings about their experiences, the question format was semi-structured, with the moderator serving to keep the discussions on topic while allowing students to offer additional information and perspectives. The questions changed sequence slightly during the interviews, depending on the responses of the participants, and unscripted follow-up questions were posed during the process.

Coding
The data from the interviews was analyzed through an iterative coding process. The data was first analyzed using themes from the modified Carlone and Johnson (2007) identity framework to code data into the three domains: competence, performance, recognition.
During the coding process there were a group of statements that did not fit into any of the framework domains, but seemed important to all participants in relation to how they saw themselves and others as engineers. This group of statements was coded with a fourth code: persistence. Through a process of constant comparative analysis (Marshall & Rossman, 2010) these four codes were used to analyze the transcripts from the interviews. In Table 1 we provide examples of the four codes.
A process of inter-coder agreement occurred with two additional researchers to improve the consistency and trustworthiness of the data. During this process, the rate of agreement was greater than 95% across the three coders. Finally, we created a data matrix that organized the data by code. This permitted the first comprehensive examination of the data. A second data matrix organized the data by participant and codes, which permitted the first glimpse of the types of themes and relationships that might be specific to each individual case.

Case Construction
To construct the cases, we utilized a descriptive case study framework (Stake, 2006). All data were first considered comprehensively to explore students' emerging engineering identities. Then the data were coded and examined by theme. Finally, the data were organized into cases to tell the story about each individual experience with engineering identity. We created the cases using the analytic lens of the identity framework, harnessing its components to describe the students' emerging engineering identity.

Findings
Here we discuss the six case studies focused on the students' engineering identity. Each case is organized around the codes of competence, performance, and recognition. Statements about the fourth code, persistence, are highlighted across the sections as they were most often intertwined with the other constructs in the interview data.

Dyan
Dyan was a 20-year-old African-American female student majoring in Civil Engineering. At the time of her enrollment in Applied Mechanic Statics, Dyan was a sophomore taking Statics for the first time. She also suggested that her growth mindset will benefit her as an engineer, and cited her ability to communicate as an asset.
Although Dyan acknowledged gaps in her competence, her sense of self as an engineer was tied to developing understandings. Within her undergraduate peer group, she saw a divide between "that separation of people that just want to get the answer, and the people that want to understand it," and placed herself squarely within the group that persisted at developing deep knowledge through understandings. Her identity as an engineer depended upon her ability to maintain membership in this group.

Performance
While Dyan's primary concern was with developing understandings, she was very concerned with her performance in her courses, and this element of her identity as an engineer was weaker as a result. Dyan struggled with her own grades, noting that she was below the required average on exams in the Statics course, and cited her performance anxiety with exams as a primary reason her sense of competence and her grades did not align well. But she maintained confidence that, when she is an engineer, her values around performance that reflects competence will eventually make her a stronger professional.
I'm goal-oriented and I want to get stuff done, Sara had mixed feelings about her own recognition of herself as an engineer, and how that recognition will develop. As a student, Sara did not see herself as an engineer yet, but rather as an engineer in development.
She understood that her competence in engineering needed to grow before she could recognize herself as an engineer. She also believed that although she will understand that she is an engineer after graduating with an engineering degree, her own recognition of self as a professional in this discipline may be dependent upon the recognition of others first.
Sara recognized her own dedication to something larger than the label of "engineer" as part of her to her unease with the performance task. "I always get scared when a problem gets thrown down in front of me." She also expressed that she tends to believe that she performs more poorly than she does, suggesting that she harbored doubts about her competence. "I remember I thought I did worse than I actually did, after I left." Kerri understood that participating in class helps students to build competence. However, her anxiety about making her knowledge visible to other students by participating in discussions prevented her from doing so. Kerri was recognized by others as an engineer as well.
Within engineering, she understood that there are "levels" to being an engineer, and that as she moved towards graduation, she will be recognized within engineering as more and more of a true engineer.
Outside of engineering contexts, Kerri was recognized as an engineer by her family, who she believed uses that recognition as a form of encouragement and pride.
Peer groups outside of engineering recognized Kerri as an engineer, particularly in relationship to her strong math abilities. "They'll just say the engineer over here...like if they get a math problem wrong, and you correct them, they'd say 'Oh, well you would know, you're the engineer.'"

Discussions
The framework used in this study informed the interpretations of engineering identity for the six participating students and was a critical element of the research question: How do first year engineering students interpret competence, performance, and recognition in relation to their identities as engineers?
As described above, the focus on confidence, recognition, and performance offered an opportunity to explore engineering identity through its components' external orientation. Here we use these three components to guide the cross-case analysis to uncover patterns across our participants. This recognition by others that they were a leader in an engineering context bolstered their self-recognition as an engineering person, in alignment with Godwin's (2016) discussions highlighting the idea that recognition by others influences students' selfrecognition. These gender differences are particularly interesting given that prior work showed that engineering practices that align with gendered stereotypes also predicted engineering identity along gendered lines (Patrick et al, 2021). Further research focused on gender differences related to recognition as an engineer would be helpful especially given the greater effect mathematics recognition had on engineering career choice for women (Cass et al, 2011). This finding suggests one possible difference between the way male and female students recognize themselves as engineers, and further research may be needed to establish this difference as a more generalizable idea.
The students perceived those outside of engineering as holding misunderstandings about the profession, and especially about what it meant to be an engineering person: they perceived that outsiders tended to believe that engineers possessed above-average intelligence, and that this allowed them to master the tough content necessary for being an engineer. All students discredited this idea in favor of persistence as a key factor in whether someone is an engineering person.
Recent attention to smartness in engineering culture (Dringenberg et al, 2019) and our participants' rejection of this stereotype suggests that this might be an interesting area for future research.
All students in this study experienced some level of recognition from others that they are an engineering person. However, two of the three non-White students have also perceived dis-recognition from others that they were an engineering person based on their race/ethnicity, which created tension around their selfrecognition as an engineer. Steve, who is Hispanic, and Dyan, who is African-American, experienced situations where they felt that others outside or within engineering have not been able to recognize them as an engineering person because of their race/ethnicity.
While both expressed strong self-recognition of themselves as an engineering person in other areas, the biases of others worked against this self-recognition that they fit within engineering. As shown by Tonso's (2006)

Limitations
Unlike the large quantitative studies of engineering identity in the past, the small sample size in this study limits the generalizability of the findings to the larger population of novice engineering students. However, the in-depth analysis provided by the case study methodology allowed us to illustrate the findings of previous studies at the individual level in ways not possible in large scale studies. In addition, this study was situated after an introductory level engineering course so these findings should be viewed through the lens that these are novice engineering students and the relative influence of the three aspects of identity may shift as students advance in their coursework towards more specialized courses.

Conclusion
Recent research on trends in undergraduate engineering, and on the experiences of students, has illuminated a variety of patterns related to when students decide to stay or go within the engineering major, and which students are most likely to persist (Meyers et al., 2012). As colleges and universities invest more effort into the retention and graduation rates of undergraduates, studies suggesting insights into the how and why of phenomena like attrition and retention become important for understanding how faculty might better support the students they serve.
This study provides a window into the construct of engineering identity that may be critically important in conversations about the steps faculty may take in working with students to promote increased retention of undergraduate students in engineering. For example, our findings suggest one way an engineering program could provide opportunities for students to engage in meaningful engineering leadership, which might support an engineering identity through selfrecognition for some students. Additionally, our findings supported previous claims that there may be differences in the factors which support the development of engineering identities depending on students' gender and racial/ethnic identities. Given this, engineering programs should consider that interventions designed to support engineering identity development are not one-size fits all and should offer opportunities to meet the needs of diverse students.