2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This is a work in progress paper.

Design education has proliferated across the engineering curriculum, underscoring the need to examine factors that shape students’ learning in design education. Jonassen (2000) described several individual-level factors that shape students’ ability to solve engineering problems. For example, Jonassen described students’ epistemological beliefs, defined as one’s belief about the limits, certainty, and sources of knowledge, as particularly important since students’ epistemological beliefs inform how one understands design problems, how one generates and evaluates ideas, and the types of knowledge claims one values or devalues during the ideation and decision-making processes in design settings. This work in progress paper joins research on students’ epistemological beliefs in engineering education to explore how students’ epistemological beliefs shape their learning in design education.

Several research studies examining engineering students’ epistemological beliefs exist in the literature. However, existing research is limited by several conceptual issues. For example, Paulsen and Wells’ (1998) study examining disciplinary differences in students’ epistemological beliefs found that engineering students held more naïve beliefs about knowledge. However, Paulsen and Wells’ study is limited in that more recent literature suggests students’ epistemological beliefs are domain-specific (e.g., engineering-specific), calling into question domain-general instruments, such as the instrument utilized in their study, for examining students’ personal epistemologies.

Engineering-specific studies also exist in the literature. However, other conceptual and methodological challenges have arisen. For example, while several instruments measuring engineering students’ discipline-specific personal epistemologies exist, these instruments are often unsupported by strong statistical evidence (e.g., inadequate sample size, poor internal consistency). This study posits that one reason these studies consistently exhibit poor internal consistency is what Louca and colleagues (2004) described as a gap between students’ professed epistemologies (e.g., what they say in the abstract in surveys) and their enacted epistemologies (i.e., how they behave in practice). Thus, a new methodological approach for examining engineering students’ personal epistemologies, one that goes beyond survey measurement and gathers data on students’ enacted epistemologies, is necessary to further the research on the role of students’ epistemological beliefs in their learning and success in engineering education.

This work in progress paper will discuss a novel methodological approach to examining students’ epistemological beliefs in the specific context of design. Specifically, we will describe a research instrument designed to position students to enact their epistemological beliefs for measurement in research studies. The instrument utilizes a case study approach in which students are presented with five engineering ideas that they are then asked to evaluate, offer feedback, and discuss the appropriateness of the underlying rationale. Drawing on data from two of six focus groups (N = 8) we will describe preliminary data collection and analysis approaches, as well as discuss preliminary findings. For example, one finding indicated that students were more likely to elevate ideas that were supported by concepts from the engineering sciences and more likely to object to ideas supported by engineers’ prior experiences or cultural knowledge. Finally, we discuss future research possibilities for examining engineering students’ engineering-related epistemological beliefs.