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
  1. Dr. Jay Mann University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]
  2. Dr. Ali Ansari Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2957-8634 University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]
  3. Wayne L Chang University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]
  4. Prof. Ramez Hajj University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
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