2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

“I can’t see race here”: Pragmatic, theoretical, epistemological, and communicative challenges researchers and instructors have with observing race in engineering classrooms

Presented at Equity, Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY) Technical Session 5

“I can’t see race here”: How researchers and faculty struggle to see racial equity in engineering classrooms

Background: Engineering classrooms are racialized and are places where racial equity or inequity take place. While engineering education research has documented insights into gender inequity and ability hierarchies, engineering education research and practice is largely not contending with issues of racial equity in everyday engineering educational practice. We seek develop a framework for understanding racial equity in engineering classrooms and to uncover barriers to this examination that may be parallel for both researchers and practitioners.

Purpose: We report on insights from the first semester first semester of a collaborative education research and practice study, embedded in engineering classrooms. We examine the challenges of observing race and racial inequity, for both researchers and practitioners. We incorporate a prior working framework for equity in engineering classrooms to consider the dimensions of classroom practice that may be radicalized.

Method: Informed by a critical pragmatic approach, our primary methods are regular engagement with three participant faculty and ethnographic observation of their undergraduate engineering classrooms. We report from the first two semester of project insights at a public Hispanic Serving Institution and a private Predominantly White Institution respectively. Our research team included a postdoc, two graduate students, and a professor, and included US-born individuals and international scholars. We collected expansive classroom fieldnotes and specific focus on racial equity metrics to conceive of a feedback loop for engineering faculty. This paper reports on the challenges with observing race as reported by both researchers and practitioners through a combination of interviews, group meetings, and researcher reflection.

Findings: Our findings include: 1) Racial identity is private but social, that is, guessing at race in observation feels uncomfortable. 2) Race has visual markers, it is hard when listening to classroom discourse to determine the race of individuals who speak. 3) Race is a third rail for those embedded in US culture, whereas it is not globally understood and is genuinely confusing for recent immigrants. 4) Race is not a binary, it is more difficult to reason about non-binary variable and the “right” makeup for interactions to be equitable. The institutional context becomes a barrier for reasoning about race, that is, any classroom diversity or interactions are presumed normal in a university with these demographics.

Significance: The significance of our findings include helping to refine research methods, researcher training, and faculty development / intervention strategies to overcome these limitations to seeing race. With greater insights into these limitations and more refined tools, we can expand the necessary focus on race in everyday engineering educational settings.

Authors

Dr. Stephen Secules http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3149-2306 Florida International University [biography]

Dr. Stephen Secules is an Assistant Professor in the School of Universal Computing, Construction, and Engineering Education at Florida International University. Secules holds a joint appointment in the STEM Transformation Institute and a secondary appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. He has bachelor degrees in engineering from Dartmouth College, a master’s in Architectural Acoustics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a PhD in Education (Curriculum and Instruction) from the University of Maryland. Prior to his academic career, Stephen was an acoustical consultant for 5 years. His education research has focused on culture and equity in engineering education, particularly undergraduate contexts, pedagogy, and student support. Through his work he aims to use critical qualitative, video-based, participatory, and ethnographic methods to look at everyday educational settings in engineering and shift them towards equity and inclusion. He also leads the Equity Research Group where he mentors graduate and undergraduate students in pursuing critical and action-oriented research.
Dr. Atota Halkiyo http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-9483-0117 Florida International University [biography]

Dr. Halkiyo is a Postdoctoral Associate at the School of Universal Computing, Construction, and Engineering Education at Florida International University. Dr. Halkiyo graduated in Education Policy and Evaluation from Arizona State University and uses mixed methods but largely qualitative inquiry to study his primary research interest: enhancing higher education equity for all students, particularly those from international and/or underrepresented backgrounds (e.g., women and/or Black students in engineering). He envisions researching and removing possible systemic learning barriers from the curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and learning environment to make education more responsive to all learners. Halkiyo taught and worked at a university in Ethiopia, where he was also a principal investigator of the “Engendering Higher Education Curricula” research project. Dr. Halkiyo is a Fulbright-Hays Fellow, where he conducted his dissertation research on global education policy transfer from the global West/North to the global South/East, specifically Ethiopia, Africa.
Maimuna Begum Kali http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-1770-7363 Florida International University [biography]

Maimuna Begum Kali is a Ph.D. candidate in the Engineering and Computing Education program at the School of Universal Computing, Construction, and Engineering Education (SUCCEED) at Florida International University (FIU). She earned her B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). Kali's research interests center on exploring the experiences of marginalized engineering students, with a particular focus on their hidden identity, mental health, and wellbeing. Her work aims to enhance inclusivity and diversity in engineering education, contributing to the larger body of research in the field.
Ms. Nivedita Kumar http://orcid.org/https://0009-0000-8354-9776 Florida International University [biography]

Nivedita (Nivi) Kumar is a doctoral candidate in engineering and computing education at Florida International University (FIU), with a research focus on caste-based inequities in engineering and computing education in the U.S. Their work examines how systems, structures, and cultures perpetuate caste inequities despite an apparent caste-blind environment. They also explore gender diversity in computing education, particularly addressing the leaky pipeline issue affecting women’s participation in STEM fields.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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