Understanding Research on Engineering Students’ Experiences and Outcomes from Student Development Perspectives

Abstract

In this paper, we have examined a major focus area of engineering education research engineering students’ experiences and outcomes, or ESEO—through a targeted literature review of 121 selected articles published by the Journal of Engineering Education from 2011 to 2021. We drew upon a methodological taxonomy (Malmi, et al., 2018), literature on student development theories, and particularly an integrative ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1993), to guide our analysis. We have presented the findings with respect to engineering students’ outcomes, and the contextual and individual factors in their learning experiences as exhibited in the selected articles, as well as the frameworks, methodologies and paradigms used by these studies. Based on these findings, we attempt to characterize ESEO studies in terms of topics, frameworks, methodologies and research paradigms. Our analyses have attested that student development perspectives in the field of higher education offer scholarly and useful insights to engineering education researchers and practitioners.