2023 Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity (CoNECD)

We analyzed participants’ experiences with hidden curriculum in engineering, or the unacknowledged, unwritten, and often unintended, lessons, attitudes, and beliefs that individuals experience as part of their engineering education. HC manifests by transmitting systemic messages in ways that they become structurally supported and sustained. Predominant engineering hidden curriculum values include meritocracy, technocracy, and masculinity. This work builds from a recent study, in which we characterized participants who had limits to their hidden curriculum self-advocacy and advocacy (self-/advocacy) in engineering. We previously identified that individuals were limited in their advocacy because: 1) HC is not/is no longer an issue, 2) equality is more beneficial than equity, 3) the way to address HC is to perpetuate the status quo, and 4) self-/advocacy is harmful to engineering. In this thread, we more deeply examined a small subset of participants’ responses (n = 7) who thought that self-/advocacy around HC in engineering is harmful to the discipline or to themselves; we noted that most (6 of 7 participants) of these participants held multiple limits to their self-/advocacy around HC in engineering.
In this research thread, we used a explanatory case study-inspired approach to analyze participants’ responses across qualitative, open-response items that gauged their awareness, emotions, self-efficacy, and self-advocacy around HC to gain more context about their experiences and reasoning behind their limits. We note that some participants (4 of 7) believe that HC, in the form of racism or sexism, is no longer an issue in engineering. A few participants (2 of 7) explicitly communicated their belief that equality should be chosen over equity. Some participants (5 of 7) maintain the status quo in engineering in their self-/advocacy, yet some participants (4 of 7) disapprove of self-/advocacy that uses an equity-based perspective. In addition to participants’ limits, we noted that participants (6 of 7) expressed anger, frustration, and resentment about the survey. Individuals also emphasized that the focus of engineering should be on technical aspects (e.g., design, equations, or numbers), rather than social elements. We also identified that affordability, or unequal distribution of support, is one main contributor to the resentment of self-/advocacy in engineering for some participants (4 of 7). While individuals experience hidden curriculum and self-/advocate, like working to pay for their engineering education, they are resistant to other means of self-/advocacy, such as others receiving gender-specific scholarships.
By connecting hidden curriculum values in engineering with individuals’ discourses (in the form of limits and resistance), we can explore topic areas where researchers, practitioners, and administrators can address to unify, rather than separate, students in engineering.