Epistemic and rhetorical recontextualization in undergraduate engineering writing : a text-informed investigation

Abstract

Undergraduate learning represents a critical and the earliest phase of transition from non-disciplinary secondary education to disciplinary practice. This transition is particularly important for engineering students who do not necessarily undergo formal post-graduate education or apprenticeship as in law and medicine. Previous research on the intellectual development of engineering undergraduates is primarily driven by self-reported data from questionnaires or interviews. Studies of engineering texts, on the other hand, generally focus on a specific genre or are cross-sectional in nature but have not examined the changes of the same writers under contextual influences. This text-informed, longitudinal, case study investigates the changes in engineering knowledge, rhetorical strategies and linguistic resources employed by three engineering students in their undergraduate writing.

Adopting a multi-dimensional engineering epistemic framework (Figueiredo, 2008), this qualitative case study analyzes in detail the interdisciplinary nature of engineering knowledge in a total of 24 written assignments. The assignments were co-selected by the students and the researcher across three levels of undergraduate study – the first year, the intermediate years, and the final year. Textual analysis was based on metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005) to reveal the reader-writer interaction and the ATTITUDE dimension of APPRAISAL (Martin & White, 2005) to unveil the writers’ evaluation of engineering content. The findings of the textual analysis were triangulated against engineering literature and perceptions of the case-study students and engineering teachers collected from semi-structured interviews.

Findings show that engineering undergraduates focus on different types of engineering knowledge, rhetorical strategies and linguistic resources across written assignments and levels of study. For example, in laboratory reports, the knowledge expressed in the precise explanation of scientific theories is mainly realized by definitional code glosses such as i.e., and defined as. This knowledge in natural sciences is distinct from the knowledge required in technical design which is highly dependent on making conjectures as reflected by the use of hedges such as may and 90% reliability in design reports. A list of 20 specific topics used for engineering arguments has been identified including explaining scientific theories, complying with government regulations and expressing individual effort and passion. Students’ learning path starts with first knowing engineering through a social lens in the first year, and then distinguishes between scientific and design knowledge in the intermediate years followed by an integration of various types of knowledge in the final year. This multi-dimensional recontextualization of knowledge, arguments and linguistic resources employed is found to be significantly influenced by the assignment prompt, the nature of technical artefacts and the form of team membership. This study offers a more realistic alternative to the over-generalized, unidimensional development model proposed by previous developmental studies, and substantiates the conceptualization of the underlying writing context traditionally considered amorphous.