2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This research paper will present findings on engineering students’ perceptions of the dynamics between students and instructors. Critical literature has argued that the engineering education tends to perpetuate learning environments that can be dehumanizing, unnecessary difficult, and oppressive. Scholars have theorized such environment and culture in various perspectives, such as technical/social dualism, the banking model of education, critical race theory, queer theories, and many other facets that can describe the lived experiences of engineering students, especially those who identify as part of the historically marginalized communities. Such work must continue to address the issues and problems faced by many engineering students who have shared their difficult and marginalizing experiences in the field. To continue contribute to the works of many critical scholars in deconstructing the engineering education culture, our study focuses the dynamics with engineering or STEM classrooms. Specifically, we explored the dynamics between students and instructors by having engineering students share their perceptions of such dynamics.

Our work studies such dynamics through an informational questionnaire. Specifically, the original study collected data through an informational questionnaire to understand students’ humanizing and dehumanizing experiences in engineering classroom. We grounded such study with bell hooks’ engaged pedagogy as provocative lens for engineering students to view their current learning experiences. The questionnaire asked students what learning moments they felt they were seen as a human being by their instructors instead of just a student, and what moments they remembered about seeing their instructors as a human being. We conducted emergent coding analysis to allow findings to emerge from the students’ responses.

Our findings have shown high number of mentions of by the participants on their interactions with their instructors that shaped how they experienced humanization and dehumanization in engineering and STEM learning environments. Some crucial findings include instructors being vulnerable with students (sharing personal stories and discussing topics not related to the course content), instructors acknowledging students having lives outside of the classrooms, and instructors providing supports to students in the learning process. These patterns emerged as key elements of what the students perceive as humanizing dynamics between them and their instructors. Such findings can continue contributing to our understanding of how humanizing engineering learning can happen and potentially impact practice among engineering instructors.