Engineering Identity Development: A Review of the Higher Education Literature

The purpose of this systematic literature review was to appraise andsynthesize the current scholarship pertaining to engineering identitydevelopment within the higher education context and create recommendations forfuture scholarship within engineering education. A review of the literatureconcluded that research on engineering identity development has increased overthe past ten years, has been conducted primarily with qualitative methods, andhas been primarily limited to academic communities focused on mathematics,science, and engineering education. In addition, current scholarship reflectedthat most of the work in this area has focused on the learning contexts andexperiences of women and underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities with lessfocus on men, international, or graduate students. Future scholarship in thisarea should focus on expanding forms of engineering identity frameworks andfocus to facilitate greater understanding of engineering identity development.