Conceptual difficulties experienced by trained engineers learning educational research methods

This paper describes conceptual difficulties that may be experienced by engineering faculty as they become engineering education researchers. Observation, survey, and assessment data collected at the 2005 NSF-funded Rigorous Research in Engineering Education workshop were systematically analyzed to uncover the five difficulties encountered by engineering faculty learning to design rigorous education studies: (1) framing research questions with broad appeal, (2) grounding research in a theoretical framework, (3) fully considering operationalization and measurement of constructs, (4) appreciating qualitative or mixed-methods approaches, and (5) pursuing interdisciplinary collaboration. The first four can be understood in terms of disciplinary consensus; they represent explicit steps in education research that are implicit in technical engineering research because there is greater consensus of methods and standards. This work better frames the issue of rigor in engineering education research by clarifying the fundamental differences that prevent application of traditional engineering standards of rigor directly to engineering education research.