2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Appreciative Inquiry as an Intervention for Equity-Centered Engineering Education Research and Praxis

Presented at Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM) Technical Session 13

Appreciative Inquiry (APPI) is an asset-based research approach that has been used in a range of domains, including organizational development, public health, and education, to study and facilitate social change in organizations and communities. APPI is grounded in social constructivist theory, which suggests that our perceptions of reality are socially constructed, and that by focusing on positive stories and experiences, particularly from people whose identities are marginalized, we can create a more positive reality in work and learning environments. Despite its prominence for more than two decades, it is not known to what extent APPI has been used in engineering education research. Further, there is limited to no evidence of utilizing APPI as an educational intervention.

As a part of an early-stage research project on evaluating the impact of asset-based practices in undergraduate engineering courses, we employed appreciative interviewing to elicit student experiences in applying their assets to projects and other learning activities in engineering courses. In recruiting interview participants, we strategically oversampled for marginalized racial/ethnic and gender identities to ensure diverse perspectives. During the interview process, we observed that student participants reflected on their strengths and connected them to their work in and beyond engineering courses, suggesting the potential of APPI to be used both as an asset-based pedagogical intervention and as a research method for collaborative sense-making with students about their experiences. We believe that students were better able to recognize and activate their assets because of APPI’s roots in social constructivism, which enable participants to engage in collective inquiry and dialogue to reveal inherent, diverse strengths that may not be readily apparent in engineering contexts. Based on this observation, we sought to answer the following two questions: (1) In what contexts has APPI been applied as a methodology in engineering education research and how can it be extended to study as equity-centered practices? and (2) How can APPI be employed as an educational or pedagogical intervention to value and activate student assets in engineering and engineering design courses and what lessons can be learned from the process? To address these questions, we will leverage data from and our experiences with appreciative interviews (n = 10 student participants) as well as a critical review of literature related to APPI. We anticipate that this work will contribute to rigor and equity in designing studies using APPI as a methodology, while also demonstrating the application of APPI as an educational intervention.

Authors

Ann Shivers-McNair University of Arizona [biography]

Ann Shivers-McNair is associate professor and director of professional and technical writing in the Department of English and affiliated faculty in the School of Information at the University of Arizona, on the lands of the Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui.
Gimantha N. Perera http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4779-1087 North Carolina State University [biography]

Gimantha Perera is a Sri Lankan born researcher and educator from NC State University. He was inspired to be an engineer by his maternal grandfather Anil, who would consistently come home from work covered in grease and grime after climbing bodily into machines to fix them. He shares a promise with his grandfather, now departed, that he will continue to innovate, contribute, and revolutionize industry through engineering and teaching. His world view that can be summed up in two statements: “Just because it works, doesn’t mean in can’t be better.” – Shuri, Black Panther and “First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare.” – Walt Disney. He obtained a Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from North Carolina State University while a part of the Accelerated Bachelors-Master’s program. He proceeded to finish his master’s at North Carolina State University under the guidance of Dr. Julie Ivy and Dr. Karen Chen. “I want my life to have mattered, I want to look back and feel like I made a difference in my brief time here. I know I won’t always be able to do this but I want to look back at the people in my life and not regret the ways in which I interacted with them; I want them to remember me and remember me fondly”. Emmerson said “The purpose of life is not [merely] to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”, I hope to live up to that ideal in the service of science and my community.
Hannah Budinoff http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5556-4389 The University of Arizona [biography]

Hannah Budinoff is an Assistant Professor of Systems and Industrial Engineering at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include additive manufacturing, geometric manufacturability analysis, design for manufacturing, and engineering education.
Dr. Vignesh Subbian http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9974-8382 The University of Arizona [biography]

Vignesh Subbian is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Systems and Industrial Engineering, member of the BIO5 Institute, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Center for University Education Scholarship at the University of Arizona. His professional areas of interest include medical informatics, healthcare systems engineering, and broadening participation and promoting servingness in engineering, biomedicine, and computing, particularly at land-grant and Hispanic Serving Institutions. Subbian’s educational research is focused on asset-based practices, ethics education, and formation of professional identities.
Francesca A López Penn State University

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