Krista received her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering at The Ohio State University in 2006 and received her M.S. from Ohio State in 2007. In 2012, Krista completed her Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering at Ohio State. Her engineering education research interests include investigating first-year engineering student experiences, faculty experiences, and the connection between the two.
started requiring a positionality statement in each paper published. To the best of our knowledge, requiring a positionality statement at JWM is a first for a journal in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, although some other journals are beginning to encourage authors to include one.With this editorial, we, the JWM editorial staff, want to clarify several aspects about positionality statements. We understand positionality statements to be only one part of a larger process of reflexivity. We also understand that for many JWM authors, professional and personal risks are associated with revealing identities in positionality statements. It is our hope that positionality statements-when understood in these more complex ways-will result in higher quality, more socially just research. And that is why JWM has committed to them.The positionality statement that appears in a JWM paper is the final product of a complex, ongoing process of reflexivity throughout the research design, implementation, and reporting activities. We join other scholars in advocating that the investigation of a researcher's positionality is an exercise in deep reflexivity throughout the research process. Investigation of positionality in this way offers opportunities for disrupting privilege and bias (Secules et al., 2021). It is not a "box-checking" exercise for the purpose of publication at the end of the research process. Engaging in the process of reflection offers the opportunity to examine the impact of our research decisions through the lens of our social identities.Many researchers-including we JWM authors-possess complex social identities that are privileged in some ways, marginalized in other ways (and often, simultaneously both) in STEM, in the academy, and in society at large. Our identities create power dynamics between us and our participants, even if only because of our membership in the hierarchical social structure of the academy. Our identities may help us at times build trust and rapport with participants. And at other times, our identities may hinder trust building. When researchers fail to recognize how the privileged and/or marginalized aspects of their identities influence their research decisions, it can inadvertently reify long-standing power dynamics and harm the historically marginalized populations for whom the journal aims to achieve inclusion (Parson, 2019).
She earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from Ohio State and earned her Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech. Her research interests focus on the intersection between motivation and identity of undergraduate and graduate students, first-year engineering programs, mixed methods research, and innovative approaches to teaching.
Service-learning (SL), especially in engineering, is a promising way to engage and support local communities, educate students as holistic citizens and professionals, and strengthen the connection between higher education and society. However, within engineering education, SL as a pedagogy has yet to reach its full potential as a transformational pedagogy. To further our understanding of why SL in the context of engineering remains limited, this contribution characterizes: 1) beliefs about engineering implicit in students’ descriptions of their SL experiences, and 2) the ways in which students’ beliefs manifest within the context of SL in engineering. We used an inductive, qualitative approach to analyze focus group and interview data. Our data includes rich, contextual descriptions of SL experiences, which enabled us to generate insight into students’ implicit beliefs about engineering and how they manifest in SL contexts. We found that students predominantly draw on three implicit beliefs about engineering when engaged in SL experiences: 1) Engineering is predominantly technical, 2) Engineering requires deliverables or tangible products, and 3) Engineers are the best problem solvers. These beliefs often manifested problematically, such that they promote university-centered and apolitical practice while reinforcing social hierarchy, leading to community exploitation in support of student development. This study produces empirical evidence that such implicit beliefs are a mechanism that limits the potential of SL by hindering community-centric and justice-oriented practice. However, some students demonstrated their ability to disrupt these beliefs, thereby showing the potential for SL as a pedagogy in engineering to surface implicit and counterproductive beliefs about engineering and achieve SL goals. The beliefs that are salient in SL and the concrete ways in which they manifest for students have implications for how SL is practiced in engineering and the experiences of both students and partner communities. These beliefs impact the extent to which the socio-political elements of the service are addressed, the quality and extent to which the engineering solution is aligned with social justice, and the extent to which SL is university- versus community-centric. The implications of these findings lead to recommendations to, and the need for future research on, how engineering educators might explicitly design SL curricula to identify, address, and dismantle problematic beliefs before they manifest in problematic ways in SL contexts.
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