Eurocentrism in Engineering: Consequences for Teamwork in Engineering Design

Abstract

Engineering design is often a socio-technical process that requires individual team members to combine, negotiate, and reconcile their individual differences (e.g., in technical knowledge, epistemological beliefs, identities, attitudes). Epistemological beliefs play a key role in complex problem solving, such as engineering design, since these beliefs informs how one comes to understand the problems, the types of solutions one considers, and how one selects and evaluates solutions. However, existing research suggests dominant Eurocentric epistemologies in engineering, such as beliefs that scientific and technical work must be objective and uncontaminated by one’s personal values, can often work to marginalize the work and contributions of women and people of color in engineering.

The purpose of this study was to examine the ways that dominant epistemologies (i.e., Eurocentric epistemologies) in engineering are manifested (e.g., articulated, embodied, strategically wielded) by individuals in design team settings in ways that shape interactions between engineering students. A first-year design course consisting of 12 engineering design teams served as the setting for this mixed-methods study that combined a critical ethnographic approach with a quantitative network analysis to examine the role of race/ethnicity, gender, and students’ engineering-related epistemological beliefs in team-based design processes.

In the ethnographic strand, guided by sensitizing concepts from Status Construction Theory, such as diffuse and specific status characteristics and four behavioral sequences (i.e., action opportunities, performance outputs, performance evaluations, and influence), I followed three focal engineering design teams during in- and out-of-classroom activities and meetings. I also interviewed each student in the focal teams about their experiences during the project about the sources of their ideas, as well as their experiences communicating ideas to their respective teams.

In the quantitative strand, I analyzed responses to three surveys. In the first, Beginning of Term Survey, students responded to an Engineering-Related Beliefs survey containing items measuring process and product objectivity and depoliticization. In the second survey, students reported their perceptions of whether each of their teammates frequently contributed new ideas to the team’s design process (i.e., contributions networks). In the third survey, students reported their perceptions of how frequently each of their teammates’ ideas were enacted during the design process (i.e., enactment networks). To analyze the role of race/ethnicity, and epistemological beliefs in contributions and enactments, I utilized both descriptive analyses and a multilayer exponential random graph model (ERGM).

In the qualitative findings I described six manifestations of Eurocentric epistemologies that appeared to shape status and influence in the students’ design teams. Broadly, while adherence to scientific objectivity appeared to be a strategic way that some students gained status and influence, that adherence took on various forms (e.g., communicating ideas using technical knowledge, rhetorical shifts to scientific knowledge, meticulous preparation). Moreover, I found that adherence to scientific objectivity did not always result in higher status or increased influence.

In the quantitative strand, I found no significant differences in contributions and enactments by sex. Conversely, while I found no significant differences in contributions by racial/ethnic categories, I found Black, Latino/a, and Native American/Native Alaskan students and Asian-American/Pacific Islander students were less likely to be reported as having their ideas enacted in their teams. In addition, I found that contributions were reinforced by enactments—students who were reported as frequent contributors were more likely to have their ideas enacted. Implications for research, teaching and learning, and theory, are discussed.