2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Y(Our) story: A collaborative autoethnographic reflection of a faculty community of practice to promote equity-oriented engineering education

Presented at Faculty Development: Broad Impact

Abstract

This research paper presents an autoethnographic study of a faculty-led community of practice assembled to promote reflection as a process to improve equity in engineering courses. The faculty participants (authors) committed to enact a variety of practices in self-reflection, reflection with colleagues, and reflection with students during one semester to build more equitable teaching and learning opportunities in their courses. This commitment came after participation in a series of DEI faculty development workshops in the previous semester and exploration of reflection practices during the formation of the community of practice.

The theoretical framework central to this work is Lave and Wenger’s (1991) communities of practice that emphasizes members’ coming together around a common interest to share experiences, to collaboratively improve their work, and to solve shared problems. Communities of practice are increasingly common as vehicles for faculty development, especially to promote high-quality, equitable instruction (Borboa-Peterson, Ozaki, & Kelsch, 2021; Hoyt, et al., 2020). As such, this paper examines the impact of a community of practice on reflective teaching to advance the authors’ interest in expanding equity-oriented classroom teaching and learning opportunities for all faculty and students.

Rooted in autoethnographic methodology (Belbase, Luitel, & Taylor, 2008), the study explores individual narratives and their intersections with the stories of other community members to better understand the experiences of engineering faculty who use purposeful reflection to promote educational equity. The authors construct a shared narrative that grew from the interactions with fellow community of practice members and explore the culture of engineering education at their institution and the opportunities and challenges of advancing more equitable teaching and learning. Findings include prevalent themes of successes and limitations to supporting equitable classrooms, the impact of a reflection-driven community of practice on individual teaching performances, and the strengths and challenges of enacted reflection techniques for engineering educators.

Authors

Dr. Jay Mann University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Jay Mann is Director of the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education (AE3) in the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Mann is a twenty-five-year veteran educator with previous experience as a high school classroom teacher, school administrator, and teacher educator. He is a three-time graduate of the University of Illinois (A.B. in History; M.Ed. in Educational Organization and Leadership; Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction).
Dr. Ali Ansari http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2957-8634 University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Ali Ansari is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds a Masters and Ph.D in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and graduated from Southern Methodist University with a degree in Electrical Engineering. Ali has been teaching for the past two years at Bucknell University in both the Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering and been focusing on student focused pedagogy centered around Game-based learning techniques.
Wayne L Chang University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Wayne Chang is an assistant teaching professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, Irvine.
Prof. Caroline Cvetkovic http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3035-7313 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Caroline Cvetkovic is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she instructs courses in quantitative physiology, biofabrication, and heat transfer. She earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Center for Neuroregeneration and Department of Neurosurgery at the Houston Methodist Research Institute.
Prof. Holly M Golecki http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3691-0420 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Dr. Holly Golecki (she/her) is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Carle-Illinois College of Medicine in the Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences. She is also a core faculty member at the Institute for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in the College of Engineering. Holly studies biomaterials and soft robotics and their applications in education. Holly received her BS/MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Drexel University and her PhD in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University.
Prof. Ramez Hajj University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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