What Does it Mean to be Smart? A Narrative Approach to Exploring Complex Constructs

• Published in: 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: Dringenberg, Emily, Kajfez, Rachel
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.10.2018
• Subjects: beliefs; Complexity theory; Engineering students; first year; identity; Interviews; Lenses; narrative; smartness; Weaving
• ISSN: 2377-634X
• DOI: 10.1109/FIE.2018.8659295

This Research Work in Progress paper focuses on the use of narrative methods to explore the complex and overlapping constructs of beliefs about smartness and identity in first-year engineering students. This effort is motivated, in part, by the perspective that the first year of engineering at the university level can be a source of hardship for many students. Not only are they navigating a new environment away from home, but they are also often experiencing new educational challenges that can push them to re-evaluate their identities with respect to smartness and becoming an engineer. We are interested in understanding how students construct and tell stories about their life experiences as learners and how these stories provide insight to their beliefs about smartness and their related identities as students or as engineers. Because these constructs are complex and overlapping, we conducted narrative-style interviews with students who self-identified as having an interesting story to tell about an educational struggle during their first year in an undergraduate engineering program. We are motivated to answer the following research questions: In what ways do narrative style interviews provide insight into complex constructs related to beliefs about smartness and identity? How do first-year engineering students describe their educational experiences with respect to smartness and identity? To scope our work, we frame beliefs about smartness through the use of Dweck's mindset theory, and for identity, we use Gee's identity lens coupled with Godwin's definition of engineering student identity. Due to the WIP nature of this research, we are still fully conceptualizing the potential impacts and implications of this work. At the time of presentation, we share our experience using narrative style interviews paired with preliminary findings related to the posed research questions.