Telling Half a Story: A Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding Culturally Relevant Engineering Education in Nigeria and the US

Abstract

This paper shares emerging insights from ongoing research investigating how engineering educators might provide culturally relevant engineering education to Nigerian and Nigerian International students. On the broader research project, a comparative case study using explanatory sequential mixed methods was designed surrounding engineering education in Nigeria and the US. This work-in-progress paper tells half of the story, focusing primarily on the emerging results in Nigeria. It contributes to the broader project by answering the following research questions: what are the conceptions of engineering educators in Nigeria and how do culturally relevant engineering educators support their engineering students in Nigeria? The paper leverages the socio-psychological teacher conceptions described by Gloria Ladson Billings' CRP framework (conceptions of knowledge, of social relations, and conceptions of the self and others). Schools located in all six of Nigeria's geopolitical zones and participants fluent in her three major spoken languages are represented in the study. The analyzed data for this study include surveys, in-person and virtual classroom observations, teacher reflection journals, classroom artifacts, school policy documents, and semi-structured interviews with 37 engineering faculty members, 2 provosts, 5 engineering college deans, and 2 students. The findings reveal a strong leaning for analogies and proverbs as analogical bridges engineering instructors in this context used when traditional experiments, classroom demonstrations, or local educational resources failed. Nuances of culturally-relevant teacher conceptions are discussed in light of CRP: using proverbs to build cognitive reasoning in Nigerian engineering classrooms; visual and auditory cues as a form of formative feedback; analogies as a pedagogical form; advocating for active and authentic learning through tutorials; leveraging the communal nature of the culture in the classroom; colonial antecedents responsible for certain school policies; manifestations of Ladson-Billings' conceptions in this context; peculiarities of the three CRP criteria in this context. The paper concludes with useful suggestions for instructors looking for culturally relevant ways of supporting students of Nigerian students in their engineering classrooms. Keywords-culturally relevant pedagogy, engineering education Resumen: este artículo comparte ideas emergentes de investigaciones en curso que estudian cómo los educadores de ingeniería podrían brindar educación en ingeniería culturalmente relevante a estudiantes nigerianos y nigerianos internacionales.