2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Growth through reflection: An arts-based focus group approach for developing intervention materials that elicited shifts in students’ perspectives on classroom struggle

Presented at Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM) Poster Session

This Work-in-Progress (WIP) methods paper describes an arts-based focus group approach originally used to develop materials for an ecological belonging intervention designed to help students normalize typical academic struggle; in this paper, we focus specifically on how the focus group process itself functioned as a site of participant reflection and meaning making. Most methodological studies of focus groups have examined this method as a data collection tool and have not documented how the process of the focus group itself unfolds or how the process can be used to offer opportunities for participant growth and development. However, our approach intentionally leveraged focus groups as both a methodological tool and a reflective space for participants. In this WIP paper, we outline the generative process used to structure more than 20 focus groups containing students who had taken a course in the past that was now targeted for our intervention. Through discourse analysis, we found that the combination of activities and facilitation created a space in which participants could share experiences, observe and discuss similarities with peers, and situate their personal growth over time, ultimately eliciting meaningful shifts in how students understood and articulated their experiences of struggle. This work demonstrates how focus groups can function as both a tool for generating rich, applied research data and as a generative context that supports participants’ reflection and perspective change. The findings suggest that applied researchers and educators can design focus groups that are simultaneously rigorous and developmental to address intervention development and equity in engineering.

Authors

Dr. Linda DeAngelo http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8508-5909 University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Linda DeAngelo is Associate Professor of Higher Education, and Director of Graduate Studies in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. DeAngelo studies social stratification, investigating how social inequities are produced, maintained, and interrupted. Currently her scholarship focuses on access to and engagement in faculty mentorship, the pathway into and through graduate education, and gender and race in engineering.
Dr. Danielle Vegas Lewis http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7266-6328 University at Buffalo [biography]

Dr. Danielle Vegas Lewis is currently a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo. Her research agenda aims to understand and disrupt the ways in which socially constructed identities allow for the reproduction of social inequality, with a focus on understanding the ways institutions of higher education and other social structures challenge or uphold hegemonic environments in which majority populations accumulate power that harms students underrepresented in certain contexts.
Dr. Jacqueline Rohde Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Jacqueline (Jacki) Rohde is the Assessment Coordinator in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her interests are in sociocultural norms in engineering and the professional development of engineering students.
Prof. Allison Godwin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0741-3356 Cornell University [biography]

Allison Godwin, Ph.D. is the Dr. G. Stephen Irwin '67, '68 Professor in Engineering Education Research in the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. She is also the Associate Director of the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility and a McCormick Teaching Excellence Institute Research Fellow. Her research focuses on how identity, among other affective factors, influences diverse groups of students to choose engineering and persist in engineering. She also studies how different experiences within the practice and culture of engineering foster or hinder belonging, motivation, and identity development. Dr. Godwin graduated from Clemson University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education. Her research earned her a National Science Foundation CAREER Award focused on characterizing latent diversity, which includes diverse attitudes, mindsets, and approaches to learning to understand engineering students’ identity development. She has won several awards for her research including the 2021 Chemical Engineering Education William H. Corcoran Award, 2022 American Educational Research Association Education in the Professions (Division I) 2021-2022 Outstanding Research Publication Award, and the 2023 AIChE Excellence in Engineering Education Research Award.
Erica McGreevy University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Teaching Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
Rachel Kelly Forster University of Pittsburgh
Gerard Dorvè-Lewis http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5542-2057 University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Gerard Dorvè-Lewis (he/him) is a higher education PhD student and scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. His broad research interests include emerging adulthood, diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education, first-generation college students, Black students, higher education policy, and student success. Prior to beginning his doctoral journey, he worked full-time in student affairs at the University of Florida where he also earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Family, Youth, and Community Sciences.
Dr. Herman Ronald Clements III http://orcid.org/0009-0002-9165-7173 University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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