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National agencies throughout Australia and the United States (U.S.) have called for broadened participation in engineering, including participation by individuals with disabilities. However, studies demonstrate that students with disabilities are not effectively supported by university systems and cultures. This lack of support can shape how students form professional identities as they move through school and into careers. To better understand these experiences and create a more inclusive environment in engineering, we conducted a constructivist grounded theory exploration of professional identity formation in students who identify as having a disability as they study civil engineering and experience their first year of work. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 undergraduate civil engineering students across the U.S. and analysed them using grounded theory techniques. Navigating sociocultural expectations of disability emerged as one key theme, consisting of three strategy types: (1) neutrally satisfying expectations, (2) challenging expectations, and (3) aligning with expectations. Regardless of strategy, all participants navigated sociocultural expectations related to their studies and their disabilities. This theme highlights the ways sociocultural influences impact students' navigation through their undergraduate civil engineering careers. These findings can be used to examine cultural barriers faced by students with disabilities to enhance their inclusion in engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how design artefacts shape interactions among student designers and design reviewers to mediate design and design learning. By analysing data collected from two design courses in mechanical engineering and industrial design courses, this study draws on Winner’s concept of politics of the artefact and Gee’s discourse analysis to explore the ways in which design artefacts help structure social relationships and power dynamics between reviewers and students in design learning settings. We use this exploration to examine how student designers work with reviewers to negotiate meaning as they shift from student to collaborator. Our results indicate that functional and well-developed design artefacts allowed students to position themselves as experts of their designs; engage in collaborative, innovative discussion with design reviewers; and elicit constructive feedback from reviewers. In contrast, students who developed incomplete or inaccurate design artefacts experienced limited dialogue with reviewers and reinforced the power distance between them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We present a case study centered on an engineering design initiative in which engineers invite scientists to participate in an interdisciplinary collaboration aimed at designing an unmanned, underwater robot. Our interviews of faculty and student project participants were the central focus of our analysis, while the knowledge products produced by the participants in the form of journal articles played a role in our formulation of an open-ended interview question set. Boundary objects in the form of fish and their bio-robotic replications emerged as having played a central role in facilitating the negotiation of epistemological challenges, which were instantiated as differing experimental practices, theories, and concepts. Our analysis of the interview data pays particular attention to the role of boundary objects and epistemological challenges in shaping research and pedagogical practices and in bringing about disciplinary knowledge gains. We propose that interdisciplinary research processes operate viaboundary objectsto facilitateepistemicnegotiations that are leading todisciplinary transformations.The researchers’ reflections indicate that many of their approaches to research and education were fundamentally impacted through this collaboration and that their respective disciplines experienced knowledge gains that may not have been possible within a single-disciplinary framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]