Engineering Students’ Learning Journeys: Identity Development

This Work-in-Progress Research paper explores the ways in which students make sense of their individual holistic learning journeys. Using methods of narrative analysis and grounded theory, this study examines how engineering students incorporate their unique moments of learning into a unified narrative of their growth and evolution, and furthermore, into an overall unified sense of self and identity. In particular, we explore how study participants respond to external narratives of learning that are suggested for them – whether these are their parents’ stories about them, or students’ sense of how they are perceived by the academic structures they inhabit. Our data indicate that students either find that external narratives resonate with their sense of self – consonance, – or fail to align with their understanding of self – dissonance. The process of interacting with and making sense of external narratives then helps shape students’ understanding of their identity and their sense of self.