2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering culture consists of the knowledge and traditions of the hegemonic, middle-class, white, male majority in the field. The default dominance of whiteness and masculinity can be perceived as unwelcoming to traditionally underrepresented and underserved student populations, like women of color (WOC). As a result, engineering culture may serve as an invisible boundary for WOC to gain positive experiences in the field. This invisible boundary is understood, in this paper, as the hidden epistemologies in engineering: the unspoken but understood rules about knowledge and knowing that influence interactions in engineering spaces. Unacknowledged problematic engineering epistemologies (e.g. hidden curriculum) create an invisible gap in knowledge, specifically for women (and more so for WOC) and their experiences. We utilize the theoretical backing of hidden epistemologies to answer the research question: How do the experiences of WOC on engineering teams reveal the hidden epistemologies embedded in engineering culture?
To answer our research question, we performed a secondary analysis on interview data from a larger study using a phenomenologically informed procedure to identify hidden epistemologies embedded in the participants’ experiences. We used interviews of nine undergraduate engineering students who self-identified as “African American” and “female” on a screening survey and an open coding method. These interviews centered around the participants’ engineering teaming experiences, and within them, we found evidence of the hidden epistemologies of engineering. Specifically, we noted that knowledge is filtered through the majority white, middle-class, male shared identities that form engineering culture, and technical knowledge is valued more than other types of knowledge. The fact that these hidden epistemologies were revealed in data on engineering teams also implies that hidden epistemologies are revealed and reinforced through the social interactions and phenomena of the education process itself.
Implications of this work reveal that some difficulties experienced by WOC in engineering teams have epistemic origins and may serve as barriers to entry into engineering. By addressing and changing these fundamentally problematic epistemologies that drive engineering culture, engineering education researchers help to reform engineering culture so the ways of knowing cultivated in engineering do not oppress the ways of knowing formed from WOC’s experiences.