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Work in Progress: Developing Methods from Feminist Standpoint Perspectives to Analyze a Panel Discussion and Promote Enduring Impact

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Work-in-Progress Session: Emergent Methods for Engineering Education Research

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44219

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/44219

Download Count

106

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Paper Authors

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Renee M. Desing Oregon State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-4052-2423

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Dr. Renee Desing is a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering. Her research interests include diversity, equity, inclusion in the engineering classrooms and workplaces. Dr. Desing graduated from Ohio State with her Ph.D. in Engineering Education, and also holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a M.S. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the Pennsylvania State University.

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Susan Sajadi Virginia Tech

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Susan Sajadi is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech in the department of engineering education. She has a BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education Systems and Design from Arizona State University. Prior, she worked as an engineer in the medical device industry.

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Christina Anlynette Alston Rice University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3099-3528

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Christina Alston, Ph.D., is an accomplished educator and researcher dedicated to promoting equitable environments in STEM education. With a Ph.D. from the University of Houston, her research focused on the racialized experiences of Black females who left K-12 science teaching. As the former Associate Director for Equitable Research, Evaluation, and Grant Development at Rice University's Office of STEM Engagement, she broadened the mission of K-12 programs to foster asset-based equitable environments for underserved populations. Dr. Alston leads NSF-funded projects and
served as the Pre-College Delegate for the Commission for Diversity Equity & Inclusion at ASEE, where she educated K-12 teachers on inclusive practices. Currently, she is the incoming Colorado Diversity Initiative Director, overseeing programs promoting diversity in STEM at CU Boulder, empowering students and researchers from all backgrounds. Dr. Alston's educational background and dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion create a critical consciousness for a sustainable and prosperous future in STEM.

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Stephanie A Damas Clemson University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-5397-7577

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Stephanie Ashley Damas is currently a graduate student at Clemson University studying to get her Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education. Her area of interest is Diversity and Inclusion in Engineering. She holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engi

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Gabriella Torres

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Corin L. Bowen California State University, Los Angeles Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-0910-8902

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Corin (Corey) Bowen is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education, housed in the Department of Civil Engineering at California State University - Los Angeles. Her engineering education research focuses on structural oppression in engineering systems, organizing for equitable change, and developing an agenda of Engineering for the Common Good. She teaches structural mechanics and sociotechnical topics in engineering education and practice. Corey conferred her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor in April 2021; her thesis included both technical and educational research. She also holds an M.S.E. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor and a B.S.E. in civil engineering from Case Western Reserve University, both in the areas of structural engineering and solid mechanics.

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Abstract

This is a Work in Progress (WIP) method paper submission.

Panel discussions have been widely used to provide diverse perspectives on pressing topics within academic and non-academic communities. Individuals participating in panels are usually brought together to express a wide range of views related to the topics chosen and to combine ideas, studies, and lived experiences. We see an opportunity to extend panel discussions to have enduring impact and to broadly disseminate the discourse created during the sessions. The incorporation of panel discussions as a research endeavor has the potential to broaden researchers' ways of knowing, yet knowledge transfer from panel conversations to peer-reviewed publications has to this point been minimal.

This paper highlights methods for analyzing panel discussions, discourse content, and panelist reflection to produce research results, new insights, and field recommendations. We explore the use of an autoethnographic, collaborative inquiry approach and qualitative coding of the panel transcript as effective methods for analyzing panel discussions and capturing the information and ideas presented in peer-reviewed publications. We pursue this endeavor through an explicit standpoint of feminist epistemology, recognizing that our varying positionalities impact our methodological approaches and our analyses of these methodologies. As women in STEM, we leverage two of the four dimensions of Black Feminist Standpoint Theory (BFT): (1) lived experiences of Black women viewed as a criterion of meaning and (2) the use of dialogue to access knowledge claims. We expand these dimensions to all women by leveraging feminist theory, which emerged from BFT.

We find the method presented especially impactful for topics related to broadening participation in engineering. The typical engineer’s identity in the United States has changed over time, particularly regarding gender, race, and ethnicity; but marginalized groups are still vastly underrepresented and their perspectives remain unvalidated within engineering and engineering education spaces. This paper is based on a panel of six early career women engineers in the academy. We illustrate how we utilized the method presented to explore our own personal and research experiences and provide our cultural definition of the state of women in engineering that was produced during our panel discussion. The method presented is a means for each engineer to contribute their distinct but overlapping personal, professional, and research experiences to create one unified message.

Together, we believe our experiences revealed unique insights worth capturing, and this paper will show transparency in our process - a process that may be replicable by participants on other panels. We hope to capture this method to help other minoritized or marginalized groups amplify their voices within the engineering and engineering education fields, furthering the calls for systemic change.

Desing, R. M., & Sajadi, S., & Alston, C. A., & Damas, S. A., & Torres, G., & Bowen, C. L. (2023, June), Work in Progress: Developing Methods from Feminist Standpoint Perspectives to Analyze a Panel Discussion and Promote Enduring Impact Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44219

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015