Reflection has long been considered an important aspect of professional practice. Educated practitioners utilize reflection to connect the knowledge of their fields, infuse this knowledge with meaning, and intertwine knowledge with their own personal identities. Recently the Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education (CPREE) has made considerable progress in promoting reflection across the engineering education community within the United States. The following study leverages the authors’ involvement, experiences, and observations within CPREE to capture the use of reflection in professional and personal settings through the lens of engineers in different contexts - faculty, students, and practitioners.
Researchers from four distinctly different institutions have collected data from 460 engineering participants (67 faculty, 267 students, and 93 practitioners). Participants were asked to respond to three open-ended prompts asking them to: 1) define reflection in their own words, 2) provide examples of reflection use in their personal lives, and 3) provide examples of reflection use in their professional and/or academic lives. A set of codes were developed to categorize responses. Definitions align with theoretical perspectives, including reflection-on-action (looking back), reflection-in-action (during), and reflection-then-action (looking forward). Personal use codes include making meaning of experiences, personal improvement, checking against one’s morals, and spiritual experiences among others. Professional use included such codes as making meaning of experiences, checking against one’s morals, improvement of learning, and monitoring performance.
This paper will present our overall results including comparisons of definitions with use and comparisons of definitions and uses across the three groups. The emerging findings will provide a better understanding of engineers’ use of reflection. This will provide a foundation for future work investigating change efforts at our institutions that aim to increase faculty and engineering students’ learning of reflection as a professional engineering skill and their associated reflective practice within teaching, learning, and engineering work.
Dr. Adam Carberry is an associate professor at Arizona State University in the Fulton Schools of Engineering, The Polytechnic School. He earned a B.S. in Materials Science Engineering from Alfred University, and received his M.S. and Ph.D., both from Tufts University, in Chemistry and Engineering Education respectively. Dr. Carberry was previously an employee of the Tufts’ Center for Engineering Education & Outreach.
Dr. Trevor S. Harding is Professor and Chair of Materials Engineering at California Polytechnic State University where he teaches courses in synthetic and biological polymers, materials selection, and fracture mechanics. He has conducted educational research in the areas of ethical decision making, reflection and innovative pedagogies for the past 19 years. He serves as Associate Editor of the journal Advances in Engineering Education. He has served as division chair for the Community Engagement Division and Materials Division of ASEE. Dr. Harding was invited to deliver a workshop on Ethics in the Engineering Curricula at the 2009 NSF Engineering Awardees Conference and to participate in the NSF Project Based Service Learning Summit. He received the 2008 President’s Service Learning Award for innovations in the use of service learning at Cal Poly. In 2004 he was named a Templeton Research Fellow by the Center for Academic Integrity. Dr. Harding received both the 1999 Apprentice Faculty Grant and 2000 New Faculty Fellow Award for his contributions to engineering education.
Patrick Cunningham is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. During the 2013-14 academic year he spent a sabbatical in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. Dr. Cunningham's educational research interests are student metacognition and self-regulation of learning, reflective pedagogies, and faculty development. His disciplinary training within Mechanical Engineering is in dynamic systems and control with applications to engine exhaust aftertreatment.
Dr. Kristy Csavina is a Teaching Professor and Assistant Department Head in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. She has her bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Dayton and her doctorate in Bioengineering from Arizona State University.
Michelle Choi Ausman is a first-year PhD student in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She received a BS in Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and an MS in Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her research focuses on exploring relationships between Asian American identity, multiracial identity, and belonging in engineering. Her research interests include engineering identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, Asian American Studies, Critical Mixed Race Studies, engineering ethics, and pop culture.
Diana Lau, a Los Angeles native, is a senior engineering undergraduate at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She is focusing her studies on product design development and packaging engineering. Lau’s passion to empower, encourage, and mentor young girls to pursue a STEM education has inspired her to volunteer her time to help at outreach events. She currently serves as an officer for the nationally recognized Society of Women Engineers collegiate section at Cal Poly. Lau hopes that STEM education can also reach and retain people who thrive in non-traditional learning environments; she is actively developing an after-school enrichment program that focuses on the benefits of a “flipped classroom” teaching model. Lau will be interning at Northrop Grumman for the summer of 2018.
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