Measuring adaptive expertise amongst first-year STEM students

Engineering programs must weave coverage of disciplinary content with the ability of students to apply and extend this content knowledge to new contexts and for use in their professional practice as engineers. It is, therefore, necessary for schools to promote and cultivate additional dispositions within their students that better enable them to adapt and employ their disciplinary knowledge. The concept of an "adaptive expert" (AE) has been previously developed within the learning sciences to describe an individual with deep content knowledge but who also displays additional cognitive characteristics that better enable them to employ their knowledge and skills in practice. Four constructs have been identified in the literature as forming the basis of this adaptive expertise: 1) multiple perspectives, 2) metacognition, 3) goals and beliefs, and 4) epistemology. Upon entry to an engineering program, it is likely that students will present with different levels of development and awareness within these particular dimensions. Baseline levels must, therefore, be measured in order to assess these levels of development and before research-based practices and activities can be designed to promote growth in these constructs, and the gains measured. In this work-in-progress study, the "adaptiveness" of incoming undergraduate students (n=711) is measured using a previously developed, validated survey instrument used in other studies to measure levels of adaptive expertise amongst undergraduate students by determining their levels along the four identified dimensions of AE. Based on this survey data, statistically significant differences were found in the AE constructs for men and women, with women outscoring men in three of the four AE subscales (MP, META, EPIST) and men outscoring women in goals and beliefs (GB). White students were found to score statistically higher than Asian students in both multiple perspectives (MP) and goals and beliefs (GB), while no statistically significant differences were observed when White and Black students were compared. The mean epistemology (EPIST) scores for White, non-Hispanic students was statistically higher than Hispanic students, and non-low-income students also scored higher than low-income students on this subscale. Further conclusions about the meaning of these results are currently difficult to determine as no prior baseline for measured data exists. [Blinded for review (information about larger project that this data will be used in) longitudinal measurement of AE after AE interventions are used to support student growth in AE]