Alienating Deep Learners
Sense-making, valued by engineers, can be discouraged in class.
By Brian Danielak, Ayush Gupta, and Andrew Elby
It’s no secret that many undergraduates feel alienated in their engineering programs and that such students often leave engineering. Our case study of “Michael,” an electrical and computer engineering major at a large state university, highlights a previously underexplored reason that some students feel alienated. Michael felt that his ways of knowing and learning conflicted with the norms of his engineering program, which he thought rewarded procedural rather than deep understanding.
Across 12 hours of interviews conducted over three years, complemented by 12 classroom observations, Michael continually displayed “sense-making” habits of mind. He tried to understand the conceptual meaning of equations instead of just following rote procedures, and he sought to unite multiple representations and formal and informal knowledge about a concept or a physics/engineering situation into an integrated whole. He also tried to connect information across his math, physics, and engineering courses when solving a problem. Coordinating multiple representations and blending multiple streams of knowledge is characteristic of expert engineering practice; and all our observations indicate that Michael’s approach to learning and sense-making resembled expert practice.
Furthermore, this type of sense-making isn’t just something Michael does; it’s part of who he is, as he emphasized repeatedly: I generally have a lot of pride [in sense-making] and . . . I feel that if [I] say something that makes absolutely no sense, like that’s just the worst thing for me.
However, this sense-making aspect of his identity also made him feel alienated from what he perceived as the dominant culture of engineering instruction. Michael felt that almost all his courses rewarded quick, procedural problem solving over the deeper, integrated understanding he liked to pursue. He felt that pursuing deep learning (instead of grinding through dozens of repetitive practice problems) could actually hurt his grades because he wouldn’t be as quick at carrying out calculations on exams. Additionally, he said that his pursuit of deep understanding placed him at odds with classmates and mentors; in one interview, making light of the matter, he said that some people call his commitment to sense-making “an illness.”
In his first year, he resisted compromising his learning for the sake of grades. But over time, as the coursework became harder, Michael talked about adapting to the system: For the record, I got straight A’s last semester. . . . I think the reason [my devotion to sense-making] actually hasn’t affected my GPA is because I view learning as a hobby. So, as with any hobby, you shouldn’t let it interfere with your GPA. But it is one of my hobbies, and I do enjoy learning, I just — up to the point where I get my grades done.
In demoting deeper learning to a “hobby,” Michael compromised part of who he is in order to continue succeeding in his program. This tension between the reward system of the program and his sense-making identity led to frustration and alienation. As of the end of our study, Michael had taken a leave of absence from his program — maybe temporary, maybe not — to co-found a software start-up company.
In summary, our study illustrates how feelings of alienation stemming from tension between one’s identity and an engineering program can arise for an ironic reason: Michael finds his sense-making identity — the sort of sense-making employed by professional engineers — conflicts with the intellectual expectations of his engineering program. Based on this work, we urge engineering educators to expand the focus of retention efforts to include retaining and rewarding engineering sense-making practices.
Brian A. Danielak is a post-doctoral researcher in engineering education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ayush Gupta is a research assistant professor of physics and instructor in the School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where Andrew Elby is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, Policy, and Leadership. This article is excerpted from “The Marginalized Identities of Sense-makers: Reframing Engineering Student Retention” in the January 2014 issue of the Journal of Engineering Education. This work was supported by NSF grant EEC-0835880.
© Francis Igot/Thinkstock