Exploring the Teaching Beliefs of Chinese-born Engineering Faculty in the United States: A Qualitative Case Study with a Focus on Teamwork

Abstract

Among the key competencies emphasized in engineering education, teamwork is widely recognized as essential for students' professional development. However, while extensive research has examined the pedagogies to build teamwork, faculty beliefs about teamwork remain an underexplored area, particularly in engineering education. This study contributes to addressing this research gap by investigating how engineering faculty conceptualize teamwork, how their beliefs influence their instructional practices, and how these beliefs align with broader educational reforms. As a crucial part of the foreign-born engineering faculty community in the U.S., Chinese-born faculty members play an essential role in these discussions. This study focuses on Chinese-born faculty's beliefs in engineering education, and findings provide implications for understanding the experiences of foreign-born faculty in general. This study employs a case study approach to examine the teaching beliefs about teamwork among 11 Chinese-born engineering faculty at an R-1 university in the U.S. Through thematic analysis, the study identifies two overarching categories of faculty beliefs: role-based themes and education-based themes. These categories encompass five key themes: (1) the roles of students, (2) expectations for faculty, (3) the faculty-student relationship, (4) pedagogical philosophies, and (5) curriculum emphasis. These themes show the main aspects of how faculty conceptualize teaching and teamwork. This study also employs narrative analysis, guided by Oleson and Hora's (2014) conceptual framework, to address how faculty develop their teaching beliefs. The findings extend this framework by revealing that cultural teaching and learning experiences also play a significant role in shaping faculty beliefs in addition to the four key influences previously identified, given that all participants in this study have educational experiences in China and the U.S. In addition, this study found that the common distinction between student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogical philosophies is insufficient to understand Chinese-born engineering faculty beliefs. The role-based and education-based categories are two major themes that define faculty beliefs about teaching in this study. The role-based themes provide an alternative conceptualization for the traditional student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogical philosophies by emphasizing the importance of the faculty's role and relationships between faculty and students in the teaching and learning process to improve student learning outcomes. In addition, the education-based themes reflect that faculty care about pedagogy and curriculum in their teaching, and they prefer to design teaching and pedagogical methods based on the learning outcomes in the curriculum. Last, this study contributes to our understanding of the "research-teaching nexus" by showing how faculty's research experiences are drawn on to develop their beliefs about pedagogy and curriculum. This study shows a straightforward link between research and teaching for just over half of the faculty members in this group. Finally, this study's findings reflected the cultural impacts on faculty beliefs due to their multicultural teaching and learning experiences. Though culture cannot fully determine faculty's beliefs, faculty are shown here to actively choose the most effective and efficient teaching methods from the full range of their previous teaching and learning experiences. The faculty's multicultural teaching and learning experiences appear to provide them with broader options for effective teaching methods while fostering deeper reflection and a more balanced perspective in their teaching beliefs.