2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This research paper examines interviews centered on affect and identity. Current research indicates that strong engineering identity is correlated with the retention of students in engineering programs. The identity framework used consisted of performance, competence, interest, and recognition (Godwin, 2016). In this research, we wanted to investigate the influence on affect and its regulation on engineering identity.

For the purpose of this study, we defined affect as the emotions, attitudes, beliefs, and values a student holds in regards to math, science, and engineering. We defined meta-affect as affect about affect, cognition about affect, and monitoring of affect. Goldin’s research on meta-affect has suggested that there is a cycle where students’ beliefs establish meta-affective contexts that in turn shape the experience of affective pathways (2002).

In this study, we sought to understand how meta-affect in math, science, and engineering influence the strength of engineering identity. To our knowledge this work is the first to look at the impacts of meta-affect on the formation of identity. We analyzed transcripts of interviews conducted with students at the end of the fall and spring semesters of their first year in an engineering program. The primary goal of the interviews was to gain insight into engineering students’ affect towards math, science, and engineering and their engineering identity.

For this comparative case study, we narrowed in on three students with different engineering identities. The first participant described having markers of a strong engineering identity (strong interest and performance) whereas the second participant had a weak engineering identity (planning to leave engineering). The third participant fell in between the other participants and shared some aspects of identity with the other two participants (strong interest and weak performance).

This work aims to answer the following research questions:
(1) What evidence is there in first year engineering students to support the presence of the relationship between beliefs, meta-affective contexts, and local affect that Goldin proposed in mathematics?
(2) What are the implications of these relationships for students’ engineering identity?

Our goal was to investigate and provide evidence for the trends and relationships between beliefs, meta-affective-context, and affect and their influence on engineering identity. We coded the transcripts for instances of affect and identity aligned with Goldin and Godwin’s frameworks. In some cases, the emotions experienced within this cycle were a result of performance. Other times, emotions directly influenced performance and competence. Through the analysis of the transcripts, an interesting trend began to emerge between meta-affect and engineering identity. We noted trends in beliefs concerning getting help, the challenges of engineering, and the innateness of knowledge. The relationship between belief, meta-affective context, and affect had different implications for the students’ identity depending on the valence of the students’ meta-affective contexts and affect. Understanding the relationship between these factors can help instructors promote more positive methods and beliefs for students' handling of their emotions. This could potentially help strengthen engineering identity and increase retention of students within engineering.