The Influence of Connecting Funds of Knowledge to Beliefs about Performance, Classroom Belonging, and Graduation Certainty for First-generation College Students

First-generation college students in engineering accumulate bodies of knowledge through their working-class families. In our ethnographic data of first-generation college students, we identified tinkering knowledge from home and from work, perspective taking, mediational ability, and connecting experiences as knowledge sources brought to engineering. The purpose of this paper was to understand how first-generation college students’ accumulated bodies of knowledge (i.e., funds of knowledge) support their beliefs about performing well in engineering coursework, feeling a sense of belonging in the classroom, and certainty of graduating. Data for this study came from a survey administered in the Fall of 2018 from ten universities across the US. In this study, only the sample of students who indicated their parents had less than a bachelor’s degree (n = 378) were used. A structural equation modeling technique was employed to examine several interconnected research questions pertaining to funds of knowledge, performance/competence beliefs, classroom belongingness, and certainty of graduating with an engineering degree. Our analysis demonstrates that the accumulated bodies of knowledge obtained through tinkering at home, tinkering at work, and the skill of being a mediator served to scaffold concepts that students were currently learning in engineering. There was a negative direct relationship between students’ ability to make connections between their home activities to scaffold what they are currently learning and their certainty of graduating with an engineering degree. However, first-generation college students’ perceptions of performing well in their engineering coursework and their sense of belonging in the classroom positively supported their certainty of graduating thus emphasizing the importance of connecting students’ funds of knowledge to engineering coursework and classroom instruction. Implications for possible approaches towards connecting first-generation college students’ funds of knowledge to engineering coursework and classroom culture are discussed. Introduction Students who are the first in their families to attend college (i.e., first-generation college students) enroll in engineering programs with accumulated engineering-relevant bodies of knowledge from their experiences at home, through their communities or through manual or skilled labor. Often first-generation college students come from backgrounds where they cannot afford or have the option to attend summer engineering camps and are instead working in manual or skilled labor venues [1]. Additionally, the knowledge and skill of first-generation college students may not be that of engineers or scientists, but of working-class families. When these skills and knowledge are not valued in the engineering classroom, it requires first-generation college students to negotiate who they are, where they come from, and who they aspire to be. When this knowledge is not leveraged in the classroom or is even devalued by others (e.g., professors, peers, and other university staff), it is a missed opportunity for first-generation college students to incorporate their core identities into engineering and to build upon the strengths of their accumulated bodies of knowledge in their active practice of engineering. It is not a coincidence that first generation college students find their knowledge and skills absent from or devalued inside of the engineering curriculum. Historical research shows that over the past century, engineering education has shifted away from hands-on practice in favor of a standardized sequence of science and math curricula; “practical” education was “systematically pushed out of the four-year curriculum and into two-year community colleges as engineers sought to establish the field as a profession befitting the middle class” [1] also see [2]–[4]. Engineering knowledge is not value neutral and—depending on how it is selected, organized, demarcated, delivered, and evaluated—it can have discriminatory effects on different populations (e.g., [5]– [7]. Often students are implicitly asked to leave aspects of themselves at the door before entering the classroom in order to learn “objective” engineering knowledge [8]. This history of the engineering profession means that class biases were baked into its educational systems, helping to explain why students from low-income and working-class backgrounds describe the culture and content of undergraduate engineering programs as foreign, if not hostile (e.g., [9]). Critically reflecting on what knowledge “counts” as engineering knowledge is thus important for understanding and better supporting students who are the first in their families to attend college. We assert that the knowledge and skillsets first-generation college students bring with them to engineering should “count,” or better yet, when this knowledge and skillsets are recognized as legitimate sources of knowledge, they can serve as capital towards learning engineering and ultimately contribute to these students’ success in engineering. Our work uses the funds of knowledge framework to help engineering educators see and build upon the crucial bodies of knowledge that are held by underrepresented students but often not visible inside of classrooms, with the ultimate goal of better supporting these students and their interest and learning in engineering. In the larger scheme, our study is also a call for social justice, as providing opportunities for first-generation college students to view their knowledge as legitimate knowledge is an important step towards equity and inclusion. Theoretical Framework Funds of knowledge are the “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being” [10, p. 133]. The funds of knowledge framework provides a counter-hegemonic response to pervasive forms of cultural deficit thinking, which view poor and minoritized students’ culture as the cause of their educational mishap (see Valencia [11], [12] for a discussion). The funds of knowledge framework uses an asset-based perspective to recognize knowledge that is often ignored [13], [14]. This framework has largely supported primary and secondary educators’ efforts to create culturally relevant pedagogical practices by leveraging students’ lived experiences (see [15]–[17]. For example, the work of Mejia and Wilson-Lopez [18] captured how Latino/a adolescents leveraged their engineering-related funds of knowledge to create a solution in a design project or in problems faced in their everyday lives. Their study found that high school students’ funds of knowledge can be relevant to engineering bodies of knowledge, skills, and habits of mind such as systems thinking, scientific or mathematical knowledge, production and processing [19], [20]. The funds of knowledge in higher education goes beyond recognizing students’ funds of knowledge to converting them into forms of social and cultural capital that can improve the students’ wellbeing and transform higher education to be more inclusive [21]. This perspective calls attention to the relationships of power within which engineering students live, including the curriculum, classroom settings, and engineering culture. It disrupts the deficit discourse found in the cultural capital theory and “challenges power structures that reproduce educational inequalities” [21, p. 35]. The work of engineering studies scholars have emphasized how cultural capital has played a significant role in the organization, legitimation, dissemination and use of engineering knowledge around the world, since the creation of engineering schools and professional societies [22]–[25]. Thus, a funds of knowledge approach presses against dominant notions of social and cultural capital by asserting the potential value of the social and cultural capital of non-elite families, while still recognizing that these can be devalued in institutional settings such as engineering programs. Parallels exists between funds of knowledge and social and cultural capital. Oughton [26] argues that both are characterized by “sets of gradually acquired and long-lasting dispositions . manifested in skills, know-hows, and competences” (p. 69). Both funds of knowledge and cultural capital can be transmitted between generations, accumulated, and converted [26], [27]. Through a funds of knowledge perspective, we capture engineering students’ lived experiences; understand how their family and community knowledge is produced and transmitted; and then investigate whether and how this knowledge is transformed into capital that serves students’ trajectories through their career paths. Recognizing first-generation college students’ funds of knowledge and how this knowledge is transmitted into forms of capital to support their engineering career pathway offers a way to position these students experiences as equally valuable knowledge in engineering.