An Early Adaptation of Identity Trajectory to Understand the Identities of Undergraduate Engineering Students

Abstract

This research category work-in-progress paper describes a beginning examination of how to adapt the identity trajectory theory from its original use with graduate students and early career faculty to understand how early career undergraduate students develop identities as engineers over time. This study focuses on students who have diverse attitudes, beliefs, and mindsets, i.e., latent diversity, to understand how engineering education and culture may support or hinder students' identity development in and out of the classroom. In this paper, we use the identity trajectory theory to explore students' stories about their background, pathway into engineering, and first-year engineering experiences. We are adapting the three strands of this framework (institutional, intellectual, and networking) in addition to identifying additional or supplementary strands to make meaning of the students' identity trajectories in engineering. We probed the aforementioned strands through narrative interviews with 26 engineering students. This preliminary work describes the challenges and affordances of translating this framework into narrative research with undergraduates and provides new ways of understanding identity development.