Closing the loop to shift the default: How alternative ways of knowing can inform research and pedagogical practice

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

In October of 2017, I came across Alice Pawley's (2017) guest editorial titled “Shifting the ‘Default’: The Case for Making Diversity the Expected Condition for Engineering Education and Making Whiteness and Maleness Visible.” Pawley articulated an argument that I had been struggling to make within my own field of aviation studies: Inclusive practice needed to extend beyond student programming and into the research and everyday praxis of engineering educators. Pawley's editorial came out at a time when I was trying to find meaningful ways to incorporate policies of diversity and inclusion within the academic curriculum at The Ohio State University. I struggled to find ways to engage with these ideas rather than simply adding them. Pawley (2017) argues “that all research, not only research focused on diversity, would report the gender and race of participants so that we can begin to see how many studies make claims about people ‘in general’ when in fact the majority of their participants are white men” (p. 532). Pawley posits that the burden of proof need not lie with those considering a diverse population in their research but rather with those who insist that a lack of diversity justifies not including diverse perspectives in their studies. Pawley is right to question why the field has not moved beyond conversations on why diversity is important to engineering education and other STEM fields. Her position, and mine, is that research and pedagogical praxis in engineering education should have moved passed conversations about the need for diversity and should already have integrated inclusive practices. I argue that the default Pawley describes cannot be shifted without first considering how to close the loop between research and pedagogical praxis. By considering both elements (methodologies and pedagogy), we can begin to create an entire educational system that is not only inclusive but also equitable. This kind of education can begin to achieve Pawley's (2017) vision that “our community of researchers and educators would no longer be able to overlook how individual instances of sexism and racism contribute to a systemic problem, and instead might start to theorize about how systemic issues like patriarchy and white supremacy are baked into engineering and engineering education” (p. 532). There is a reason why minorities have historically been underrepresented. Simply adding individuals to a research agenda because they represent a diverse body does not really account for the diversity of experiences. Beyond the ways in which research is conducted, if engineering and engineering education are going to address issues like patriarchy and white supremacy, then the research ultimately needs to connect back to pedagogical practice. In “Narrative Agency of a Marginalized Engineering Student,” Secules, Gupta, Elby, and Tanu (2018) demonstrated how an innovative approach to research can be fruitful. The authors relied on Black feminist scholar and educator bell hooks to provide a way of theorizing and articulating the experiences of a marginalized student. The stated purpose of their research was to apply “scholarship from critical theory and narrative as a new resource for approaching and understanding the process of supporting marginalized student agency” (Secules et al., 2018, p. 186). The authors understood that their particular research into underrepresented students necessitated a different approach to theorizing about the connections between student experiences in engineering and mentorship programs. This research project was robust, using alternative forms of analysis of the experiences of underrepresented students in engineering. In particular, they referenced bell hooks to describe why their research used a methodology that “formulates theory from lived experience” (Secules et al., 2018, p. 187). Despite their engagement with hooks' literature, the authors reference this work as being “disparate” from traditional engineering research: “To contribute to this work as researchers, we can place disparate literatures in conversation with one another to look anew at problems and for sources of inspiration” (Secules et al., 2018, p. 187). Referencing hooks' work in this way reinforces what I call the “defensive justification” that Pawley was pushing back against. No justification of hooks was needed, and in fact, the authors were innovative in looking to other fields for new ways of understanding and researching the student experience. Underrepresented and marginalized people cannot be included in the research process without thinking about the kinds of methodologies that are being used to include them. This is where Secules, Gupta, Elby, and Tanu excelled. There is a clear consideration for how theory making can become a liberatory practice for the marginalized student as hooks has described. Yet, there is a clear disconnect between the research itself and a change in pedagogical praxis. Secules et al. (2018) further argue that “while it is well established that mentoring and support programming are effective, we have not made comparable progress in our understanding of the nuances of how particular practices should be enacted, the theoretical understanding of why they might work, and what new models may refine and/or challenge existing work” (p. 188). They make an excellent argument for analyzing how these innovative research methodologies might translate into inclusive praxis. To close the loop, I argue that researchers can look more closely at feminist scholars, and in particular Black feminist or Women of Color scholars, to translate inclusive research methodology into inclusive education pedagogical practice. While Secules et al. (2018) used Black feminist scholar bell hooks to create space and opportunity for marginalized individuals to theorize about their own experiences in ways that have the potential to be liberatory, there is an element that was still missing. How does the field of engineering and engineering education move beyond inclusive research into inclusive pedagogical practice? As Courtney Elkin Mohler (2017) wrote, “students have been mainly educated in the Western tradition within the United States education system. Despite differences in their ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds, most of my students have neither been exposed to non-Western modes of thought nor have they spent time critically analyzing their own biases. One of my goals is to give my students some tools with which to begin to consider what one's worldview is and how it impacts one's life and others” (p. 93). Mohler articulates the importance and value for considering alternative ways of knowing and alternative experiences as a part of the pedagogical practice that educators use. The question is how do we get there from inclusive research practice? One way that researchers can begin to think about the experiences of their students is through intersectional theory, as put forth by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her 1989 article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist, Theory, and Antiracist Politics.” Crenshaw (1989) writes, “With Black women as the starting point, it becomes more apparent how dominant conceptions of discrimination condition us to think about subordination as disadvantage occurring along a single categorical axis” (p. 140). Crenshaw was theorizing about the law and the legal profession in the United States and how Black women are often marginalized in multiple ways because of their identities as both Black and women. She argues that one cannot fully understand or theorize about the lives of marginalized groups without consideration for the intersectional experience. “Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated” (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 140). While Crenshaw was theorizing specifically about Black women, an intersectional approach can be applied to a variety of underrepresented groups (e.g., LGBTQ, Latinx, students with disabilities, and Indigenous people). Key to using an intersectional approach is the recognition that the experiences of marginalized and underrepresented students are complex and not just the sum of their identities (e.g., being queer and Black), but the ways in which individuals can be subjected to what Crenshaw (1989) calls “double-discrimination” (p. 149). Secules et al. (2018) provide us with a starting point. Their methodological process was situated within bell hooks' work. It addressed the positionality of both the researcher and the interviewee, and the narrative agency of the marginalized student as a space for liberation. These are all key to a successful research project that integrates inclusive practice and accounts for the intersectionality of experience. Sachi Edwards (2017) writes about her own experiences as a student in a hula class and her instructors' emphasis on learning through Indigenous ways of knowing. “As an educator it reminds me to reach beyond the narrow confines of pedagogy imposed by the Western obsession with standardized curriculum and assessment. As a researcher, it encourages me to examine education in ways that honor Indigenous modes of inquiry, despite deep-rooted institutionalized biases toward positivist methodologies” (p. 66). It is critical that engineering and engineering education incorporate inclusive practices into our classrooms as well as the research that is being conducted on student experience. One example is the work by Jordan and Foster (2019) in this issue of JEE, “Learning from the Experiences of Navajo Engineers: Looking Towards the Development of a Cross-cultural Engineering Curriculum,” which makes explicit the need for careful consideration of how culture informs engineering design and practice. The research is clearly moving in the direction of being more inclusive and of considering the experiences of those who have traditionally been marginalized. However, this approach has yet to make its way into how we educate all students. So the question becomes how it can be translated into classroom experience. One discipline that we might look to is art education, and in particular Indigenous art education. Here, there is an emphasis on combining both traditional Western approaches to education and those from Indigenous cultures, which value and understand history through oral story telling practices and the creation of visual representations (e.g., ledger art). This field places a high value on alternative forms of knowledge making and engaging with the world. It emphasizes engaging with ancient history from the position of Indigenous people. For STEM fields and engineering education, this might mean that students are asked to engage with scholars that come from a non-Western tradition. Or it could mean that faculty incorporate transparent assignments (Ou, 2018; Winkelmes, 2013) in their courses. Transparent assignments are those that tell students the objectives of the assignment and how it will benefit student learning. Sustaining inclusive pedagogical praxis will in turn have an increased impact on education research and vice versa. The default, as Pawley describes it, will have shifted. As bell hooks (1994) wrote, “To begin, the professor must genuinely value everyone's presence. There must be an ongoing recognition that everyone influences the classroom dynamic, that everyone contributes. These contributions are resources” (p. 8). hooks resonates with me in the same way that Pawley does. It is ultimately about the added value of inclusivity in our research and classrooms, the idea that knowledge can be created and shared in diverse ways. If we want engineering education as a field to be innovative in how it researches and engages with the student experience, then it cannot just shift the default for education research; it must reconsider both its methodological practices and pedagogies so that they “value everyone's presence.”