Understanding Access to Learning Opportunities in Collaborative Projects: Gendered Social Hierarchies in Student Teams

Abstract

Background: Prior research has demonstrated that participation in authentic learning experiences that resemble real-world engineering practice is key to unlocking the benefits of collaborative projects, such as design projects, for students in engineering. However, research has also documented that women are less likely to participate in key learning experiences in engineering design education, undermining the goals of project-based learning.Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this research study was to understand how social power dynamics shape the types of tasks allocated to students in teams and, by extension, students learning in collaborative engineering design projects. Drawing on the Model of Inequitable Task Allocation in Project-Based Learning, this work examines the role of prior experiences and skills, self-efficacy, and students' motivation in the process by which design tasks allocation is negotiated in student teams.Design/Method: This ethnographic study entailed three data collection strategies: (a) ongoing observations of three focal design teams in a cornerstone design course, (b) oneon-one, semi-structured interviews with focal design team members, and (c) reflections from peer mentors who worked with focal and non-focal teams.Results: Students reflected on their prior experiences and skills, and the confidence they gained or lacked as a result, when negotiating their roles in their teams. Importantly, students' valuation of their skills was gendered, where masculinized notions of engineering skills might lead women to underreport their skills during the role-negotiation process. Finally, while gendered patterns of marginalization and exclusion were apparent, I discuss the strategies women employed to exert influence over their team dynamics. Conclusions:Ensuring equitable participation in collaborative projects is key to support learning for all students in collaborative projects. Understanding how students negotiate their roles and learning opportunities is an important step in supporting students' learning in collaborative projects.

Understanding the relationship between idea contributions and idea enactments in student design teams: A social network analysis approach

“…Still, existing research suggests the process of communicating, negotiating, refining, and selecting design ideas is informed by the personal characteristics of students who are participating, including sociocognitive factors such as their self-efficacy for design tasks, team-level factors such as psychological safety and climate, as well as student characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender) that carry performance expectations that preclude some students from full, equitable participation (Cole et al, 2022;Fowler & Su, 2018;Henderson, 2023). For example, in a case study of a cornerstone design team, Hirshfield (2018) described complex gender dynamics that shaped divisions of labor and contributions to the team, noting that the female student reported lower confidence, being talked down to, and being kept from doing technical engineering work by her male teammates.…”

“…Indeed, decades of research have documented the ways that cultural knowledge about engineering identities that shape who is recognized as an engineer (i.e., White, man), and who is not (i.e., women, students of color), shape designerly behaviors in engineering teams (Tonso, 2007). Such dynamics can disrupt the social process of team decision-making, leading women to be less involved in critical design discussions and decisions in student teams (Henderson, 2023;Hirshfield, 2018).…”

“…Engineering design education is a socio-technical process that positions students to communicate engineering ideas, negotiate task allocation, make engineering judgments, and evaluate engineering decisions against varying ambiguous, competing, or ill-defined constraints (Dym et al, 2005;Fowler & Su, 2018;Francis et al, 2022). However, recent scholarship on students' experiences and learning in team-based design pedagogies indicates that students' learning is often informed by issues at the intersection of race/ethnicity, sex, and engineering decision-making, including how tasks are allocated, whose ideas are heard, and how teams make engineering decisions (Henderson, 2023). Drawing on social network methodologies, this research investigates how student characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, sex, and their personal epistemologies, are associated with important teamwork processes, such as perceptions of patterns of idea contributions (i.e., "Who is contributing ideas to the team?")…”

“…This negotiation process will play out differently across teams, informed by the personal characteristics, values, beliefs, and prior experiences of the team members. However, the negotiation process is also informed by qualities external to the classroom (Henderson, 2023). For example, students who come to the class with prior experiences with CAD modeling might be more likely to gain access to CAD modeling tasks during the team negotiation process as a direct result of their experiences prior to entering the classroom (Henderson, 2023).…”

“…Processes of inequity in design education are particularly important given the consistent finding that access and participation in authentic engineering activities is associated with retention, persistence, and success for minoritized students (Palmer et al, 2011). As students' access to meaningful learning experiences in team-based, project-based learning is often negotiated among team members (Fowler & Su, 2018;Henderson, 2023), understanding the complex social process by which some students come to engage in important learning experiences in their design teams while others do not is a critical area for understanding students' learning in collaborative, project-based learning, such as engineering design education.…”