Keywords: faculty, diversity, decision making
How Do Engineering Educators Take Student Difference into Account?
It is considered good practice to teach with an awareness that groups of students will not be homogeneous, and will
differ. Research tells educators to take into account specific student differences, including learning styles,
socio-economic status, race, and culture. This important issue has been debated and discussed; however, little has
been written about how engineering educators examine, consider, and use student differences in their teaching practice.
This paper addresses the extent to which, and the ways in which, engineering educators take student differences into
account when making teaching-related decisions.
| …differences to which educators attend may not be aligned with the differences that research
suggests educators address.
|
Implications of Findings
The results suggest that engineering educators are taking student differences into account, but that the differences
to which educators attend may not be aligned with the differences that research suggests educators should address.
The results suggest the following implications for faculty developers or others interested in helping educators more
effectively take student differences into account:
- Assume that educators are already taking some types of student differences into account.
- Recognize that changing teaching practice to take new types of student difference into account may vary across
educators. Some approaches are (a) adding these new types of difference to existing practice, (b) integrating the
new types of difference with existing practice, and (c) working to reconcile prior practices with new proposed
practices.
- Consider using a strategy, such as a CDM interview, to understand the educators’ existing approaches to
addressing difference so that any new approach is anticipated and supported.
Methods and Background
The data for this study were collected as part of a larger study to understand how engineering educators make
teaching decisions. The participants in this study were 31 engineering educators at a large public institution.
Interviews were conducted based on the Critical Decision Method (CDM; see full paper at the link below for details).
Participants were invited to explain teaching decisions in general and to identify two specific, recent, memorable
decisions (a planning decision and an interactive decision). Interviews were transcribed and coded for evidence that
student differences were taken into account.
Codes for “taking differences into account” included: academic level, behavior, race/culture, gender, profession,
socioeconomic status, other. Difference was also evident in an analysis of educators’ language based on the number
of times a subset of difference was indicated ("quantity"), word choice (e.g., some, a few, most), and other types
of difference. This ten-category coding scheme was applied to all interview transcripts. The coding results were
analyzed to address the questions about the extent to which educators accounted for student differences and the types
of differences educators take into account.
What We Found
A combination of quantitative and qualitative results was used to provide answers to the research questions. From
a quantitative perspective, two metrics were identified for characterizing the extent to which the educators took
difference into account: the percentage of the turn-taking events during the interview that were coded as addressing
student difference in some way (prevalence) and the different types of student difference an educator mentioned
(coverage).
Every participant took difference into account but these were not the same differences (as suggested by other
research) that faculty should consider when taking student difference into account. While each participant discussed
at least two of the difference categories developed for the coding scheme and described above (see full paper at the
link below for details), no one talked about difference in terms of all 10 categories.
Qualitative case studies are also presented in the full paper (link below) that further illustrate the quantitative
results described above. Three participants are described in detail and represent a range of student difference that
was considered by all participants in the study sample. Case one illustrates a participant who focuses on student
difference in many categories, particularly student behavior and level. In case two, the participant focuses on
student difference in many categories, but with an emphasis on level. The participant in case 3 minimally focuses
on differences.
Citation: Sattler, Brook, Jennifer Turns, and Kathleen Gygi. 2009. How Do Engineering Educators Take
Student Difference into Account? Proceedings of the 39th Frontiers in Education Conference, October 18-21, 2009,
San Antonio, TX.
The full paper, including references, is available via ASEE proceedings search.
For a printable pdf of this research brief, click here.
Brief created October 2009
Back to Research Briefs