Working towards emotionally responsive student support: an exploration of the emotions that surface when navigating undergraduate engineering education

Abstract

Engineering education is brimming with obstacles and opportunities that evoke emotions in students. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the emotions that surface when students in the United States discuss how they navigate engineering. We used a psychoevolutionary approach to emotion and conducted 26 semi-structured interviews at one institution with undergraduate engineering students. We analyzed student interviews using a priori codes from an emotion wheel and emergent codes related to the context of their emotions. We found these relationships between emotions and their contexts: 1) an engineering course load and being marginalized in engineering are both emotionally uncomfortable; 2) peers and instructors can cause both comfortable and uncomfortable emotions; and 3) future career plans provide emotional comfort. To most effectively support undergraduate students, practitioners should be aware of these emotional realities so they can provide more emotionally responsive support to students.