CHAPTER 3
Situative Frameworks for Engineering
Learning Research
Aditya Johri, Barbara M. Olds, and Kevin O’Connor
Introduction
There is increased concern with develop-
ing a better understanding of how people
learn engineering, as prior efforts to improve
engineering education have often followed
an ad hoc trajectory. The field lacks a sys-
tematic understanding of how engineering
learning occurs and there is a paucity of
knowledge on which to draw (Felder, Shep-
pard, & Smith, 2005; Chapter 1 by Froyd &
Lohmann, this volume). To help redress this
situation, in this chapter we review scholar-
ship on learning with the aim of building a
framework that can guide future research on
engineering learning. Specifically, we hope
to make the case for a framework that
focuses on situativity and learning in engi-
neering settings. This chapter complements
other chapters in this volume including
Chapters 2 by Newstetter and Svinicki; 4 by
This chapter is a substantially revised version of Johri
& Olds (2011), which appeared in the Journal of Engi-
neering Education (Vol. 100, Issue 1, pp. 151–185). We are
grateful to the American Society of Engineering Edu-
cation (ASEE) for permission to reproduce portions of
the text.
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Roth; and 5 by Streveler, Brown, Herman,
and Monfort that also focus on learning.
An Introduction to Learning
During the past couple of centuries, scholars
from a wide range of disciplines including
philosophy, psychology, anthropology,
and sociology have spent considerable
time trying to answer questions related
to learning, such as: How does cognitive
development take place? How do we grow
from a child with rudimentary abilities and
knowledge into a highly skillful adult? How
are humans able to engage in highly com-
plex activities? Some scholars whose work
has had a major influence on research on
learning include Lev Vygotsky (1962, 1978),
Jean Piaget (1952, 1964), John Dewey (1896,
1934), Harold Garfinkel (1967), William
James (1890/1950), George Herbert Mead
(1934), Gregory Bateson (1978), Michel
Polanyi (1967), and Jerome Bruner (1990,
1960). Core ideas of these scholars adopted
by learning researchers in their intelle-
ctual and methodological trajectory include
47
 48 cambridge handbook of engineering education research
Vygotsky’s cultural historical theory,
Piaget’s genetic epistemology, Dewey’s
transactional account, James’s pragmatism
and realism, Polanyi’s tacit knowledge,
and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology. These
ideas have not only shaped theoretical
development of the field of learning but
have also influenced the design of learning
environments including our schools and
curricula. Many central ideas that we take
for granted in educational practice, such
as the progression of child development
through specific stages and the value of
group work and collaborative learning, can
be traced back to these influential scholars.
Greeno, Collins, and Resnick (1996) pro-
vide a useful classification of research on
learning that occurred over the twentieth
century and divide the work into three
broad areas: behaviorist, cognitive, and situ-
ative. Chapter 2 by Newstetter and Svinicki
provides a comparative analysis of these
three perspectives. In this chapter we draw
primarily on the situative perspective and
discuss its implications for research on engi-
neering learning. The situative perspec-
tive views knowledge “as distributed among
people and their environments, including
objects, artifacts, tools, books, and the com-
munities of which they are a part” (Greeno
et al., 1996, p. 17) and learning is conceptu-
alized as meaningful participation in a com-
munity of practice. There is an understand-
ing that “the constraints and affordances of
social practices and of the material and tech-
nological systems of environments” (Greeno
et al., 1996, p. 17) shape learning significantly.
The situative movement differs significantly
from prior approaches such as the behavior-
ist and cognitive perspectives in its empha-
sis on the role of the environment on an
individual’s conception of knowing and how
he or she learns – knowledge is not some-
thing that an individual possesses or stores
in the brain but is present in all that he or
she does. Clancey (1997) succinctly summa-
rizes the situative perspective and how it dif-
fers from the cognitive perspective when he
argues, “The idea that knowledge is a posses-
sion of an individual is as limited as the idea
that culture is going to the opera. Culture is
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pervasive; we are participating in a culture
and shaping it by everything we do. Knowl-
edge is pervasive in all our capabilities to
participate in our society; it is not merely
beliefs and theories describing what we do”
(p. 271).
The Situative Perspective on Learning
As introduced in the preceding section,
one significant change in research on learn-
ing over the past couple of decades is a
move toward examining learning as a sit-
uated activity. The situative perspective is
broad and owes a debt to many scholars
and ideas. Its seeds can be traced back to
the work of Dewey (1934). This perspec-
tive has been referred to as situated cog-
nition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989;
Greeno, 1989; O’Connor & Glenberg, 2003),
cognition in practice (Lave, 1988), situ-
ated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991), situ-
ated action (Suchman, 1987), sociocultural
psychology (Rogoff, 1990; Wertsch, 1993),
activity theory (Engeström, 1987), and dis-
tributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995). Greeno
(2006) refers to the perspective as situative
and/or situativity, as opposed to situated
learning, to prevent the misconception
that only some action, cognition, or learn-
ing is situated. He argues, as do oth-
ers (Lave, 1988; Suchman, 1987), that all
action, cognition, and learning are situ-
ated, whether in informal settings or for-
mal school settings. The situative perspec-
tive views human knowledge as arising
dynamically, being constructed and/or rein-
terpreted, within a specific social context
(Clancey, 2009). Furthermore, knowledge
is socially reproduced and learning occurs
through participation in meaningful activi-
ties that are part of a community of prac-
tice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This participa-
tion is mutually constituted through, and
is a reflection of, our thinking and liter-
acy skills (Gee, 1997). According to Sawyer
and Greeno (2009) the core commitment
of the situative perspective is “to analyze
performance and transformation of activ-
ity systems that usually comprise multiple
 situative frameworks for engineering learning research
people and a variety of technological arti-
facts” (p. 348). In other words, a central aim
of the situated perspective is to understand
learning as situated in a complex web of
social organization rather than as a shift in
mental structures of a learner.1
Recently, many scholars have argued for
research that bridges the cognitive and sit-
uative perspectives on learning (Greeno &
van de Sande, 2007; Vosniadou, 2007). These
efforts are driven by a desire to overcome
what some see as a dichotomy between
approaches that see learning in terms of
acquisition of knowledge by individuals and
those that see learning in terms of participa-
tion in forms of social organization (Sfard,
1998). Cognitivists ask, if all learning is situ-
ated – and participatory – then how do we
account for transfer (Bransford & Schwartz,
1999)? One way in which situativists answer
this criticism is by arguing that we apply
what we know in a new activity based on fea-
tures common to that activity and previous
activities and by reframing the learning con-
texts (Engle, 2006).2 Still, this answer does
not satisfy all conditions of transfer – such as
use of knowledge in a novel domain or sit-
uation – and remains a critical challenge for
the situative perspective. Arguing that both
acquisition and participation metaphors can
provide useful guidance for research, some
scholars have proposed a third metaphor,
“knowledge creation,” as a way to provide
a better overall framework – consisting of
all three metaphors – to advance our under-
standing of learning (Paavola, Lipponen, &
Hakkarainen, 2004).
Another thorny issue between the pro-
ponents and opponents of the situative per-
spective is the question of whether indi-
viduals learn or learning is a characteristic
of an activity system (Salomon & Perkins,
1998). Although situativity scholars argue
that situativity does not preclude learn-
ing from occurring at an individual level,
empirical studies of situated activity have
primarily dealt with a group-level anal-
ysis. These debates show the continuing
importance of cognitivist and situativist
approaches but they also highlight the devel-
opment of the situative perspective along
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49
two slightly different trajectories – sociocog-
nitive and sociocultural. Whereas research
in the sociocognitive tradition follows the
cognitive tradition in its focus on the indi-
vidual in his/her immediate surroundings,
sociocultural scholars look at participation
of learners in broader communities.
We believe that a deeper understanding
of the situative perspective can provide valu-
able lessons for engineering educators, par-
ticularly in their efforts to develop theoret-
ical insights into engineering learning. To
facilitate this process, we next outline and
discuss three analytical aspects of situative
learning. First, we look at the importance of
action as the primary analytic focus of situ-
ative approaches. Second, we examine the
role of mediation in the conduct and devel-
opment of action. Third, we explore the
ideas of participation and identity in relation
to situativity. Finally, we discuss some cur-
rent critiques of situativity. After discussing
each concept in detail, we explore their sig-
nificance for engineering learning and how
they can help inform future research.
Primacy of Action and Interaction
One of the primary aims of situative ap-
proaches to cognition and learning has been
a critique of dominant paradigms of knowl-
edge, learning, and schooling, and, most par-
ticularly, of the views of cognitivism (e.g.,
Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996, 1997; Vera
& Simon, 1993). A major difference between
cognitivism and situated perspectives lies
in their respective views of the relation-
ship between mind and action. All situ-
ative theories begin from the assumption
that primary analytical emphasis should be
placed on human action or activity3 ; they
thus reject in principle the cognitivist notion
that cognition and learning are phenomena
that can be considered as analytically sepa-
rate from and prior to action (O’Connor &
Glenberg, 2003). Cognitivism assumes that
individuals and the world are fundamen-
tally separate and that the world has a
single, objective, and knowable character.
Knowledge about the world, in the form
of stable mental representations located in
 50 cambridge handbook of engineering education research
individual minds, is taken to underlie and
enable action or behavior in concrete con-
texts, which are assumed to have a deter-
minate character apart from human activity
and interpretation. In this view, the power of
knowledge depends on its degree of abstract-
ness and generality – the more abstract
and general, or “decontextualized,” knowl-
edge is, the more contexts in which it will
allow for action, or “intelligent behavior”
(Vera & Simon, 1993). Learning, from this
perspective, involves an individual’s move-
ment away from the concrete, situated, and
purportedly faulty and inefficient forms of
thought taken to characterize everyday life,
and toward the acquisition of abstract, gen-
eral, and universally applicable conceptual
knowledge. Learning is best brought about
by separating learners from the complexities
of everyday experience and providing them
with instruction designed to allow them to
acquire explicit decontextualized concepts
that can be transferred to and applied at
other times and in other places.
Situative approaches have challenged
these cognitivist assumptions about the rela-
tionship between mind and action, including
the presumed separation between individu-
als and an objective and stable world, and
about the nature of knowledge and learning.
Theories of situated learning start not with a
given world, but with a world in process, and
“contexts” do not completely predetermine
human action and interpretation. Instead,
human agents flexibly contextualize (Duranti
& Goodwin, 1992; Lave, 1993; McDermott,
1999; Miller & Goodnow, 1995; O’Connor,
2003) their ongoing activity. That is, through
their activity, people construe, and thereby
constitute, the context of that activity as a
context of a certain type, involving partici-
pants of a certain type. Activity is partially
structured through the use of material and
semiotic resources that have evolved within
and are associated with particular practices.
This is what makes activity recognizable and
reproducible across occasions. The mean-
ing of activity is not determined by the
use of resources associated with particular
practices, however, because there are always
contingencies on any particular occasion
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that ensure that a given instance of activity
will be unique (Wertsch, 1998). The consti-
tution of contexts out of the flow of activity,
then, requires ongoing reflexive judgments
as to the type of context that participants
are engaged in, and as to the adequacy
and appropriateness of any particular con-
tribution to a context of that type (Lave &
Wenger, 1991). This is an inherently evalua-
tive process in which all participants in activ-
ity position themselves with regard to one
another, the ongoing activity, and broader
forms of social organization. Of course, if
contexts are indeterminate and constituted
through activity, then knowledge cannot
be understood as inhering in decontextu-
alized and stable mental representations of
a given, unchanging, and objective world.
Instead, knowledge is seen as located in
ever-changing forms of situated, embodied
activity in and with the world (Lave, 1988;
Scribner, 1997a), and as continually negoti-
ated by participants in activity. This view
removes knowledge from the heads of indi-
viduals and locates it in broader forms of
social organization. In this view, learning is
not limited to didactic activities in formal
environments and occurs across diverse set-
tings and in and through interaction among
people and objects (Lave & Wenger, 1999;
Scribner & Cole, 1973). Rather, schools are
taken to offer atypical educational experi-
ences that are divorced from daily life expe-
riences (Scribner & Cole, 1973); they are
inauthentic (Brown et al., 1989) and consist
of decontextualized knowledge (Donaldson,
1978).
Mediation in Social and Material
Context
The focus on action has led researchers
associated with the situative perspective to
examine how people engage in a wide vari-
ety of practical tasks, from the seemingly
mundane activity of what Lave (1988) ironi-
cally called “just plain folks” (grocery shop-
pers, cooks, bartenders, street vendors, fac-
tory workers, and the like) to those engaged
in activities taken to be the height of ratio-
nality, such as science, mathematics, and
 situative frameworks for engineering learning research
engineering (e.g., Goodwin, 1994; Latour,
1987, 1999). A central focus of this work has
been on the ways in which action is medi-
ated by artifacts, both material (such as lab-
oratory equipment and calculating devices)
and semiotic (such as language, mathe-
matical notation, and graphical represen-
tation).
The significance of this can be seen in
the foundational work of Sylvia Scribner
on problem solving in the activity of dairy
workers. Scribner (1997b) challenged a num-
ber of ideas promoted by cognitivist models
of problem solving, including that problems
are given to the problem-solver in a com-
plete form; that problems of the same logical
class will be solved by the same sequence of
operations on all occasions; and that learning
involves increasing independence from the
concrete particularities of a context. Scrib-
ner’s ethnographic and experimental work
showed instead that what appeared, in the-
ory, to be formally identical problems were,
in practice, flexibly formulated and solved
by the problem solver according to the con-
tingencies of the environment, including the
mediating artifacts that were available. She
showed, for instance, that the dairy workers
reformulated abstract computational prob-
lems into problems that depended on the
concrete physical array of the product they
are working with, such as the cartons being
loaded and the crates into which they were
being placed. She thus argued, against cog-
nitivist views of problem solving, that these
mediating artifacts play a “constitutive role”
in cognition. She argued that, “skilled practi-
cal thinking incorporates features of the task
environment (people, things, information)
into the problem-solving system. It is as valid
to describe the environment as part of the
problem-solving system as it is to observe
that problem-solving occurs ‘in’ the environ-
ment” (1997b, p. 329).
The general point for situativity is that
all activity is mediated by artifacts. Even
material artifacts, as Scribner’s work shows,
not only have a physical dimension but also
allow us to represent symbols and mani-
pulate those symbols (Hutchins, 1995, 1993;
Norman, 1993; Pea, 1993b; Perkins, 1993).
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51
When the dairy workers transformed
abstract computational problems into prob-
lems that were tied to the physical
environment in which they were situated,
they did so by using materials (e.g., milk
crates) designed for noncognitive purposes
(e.g., holding bottles) to mediate their for-
mulation and solution of a cognitive task.
Thus, from a situative perspective, represen-
tations are not abstract, disembodied, and
detached from the world, as they are for cog-
nitivism; rather, they arise in the course of
situated activity and get their meaning from
their use. As Dourish (2001) puts it, “repre-
sentations are as representations do.”
In summary, mediation is central to the
situative perspective. Representations have
been a strong focus of research within
the learning sciences and have played an
especially strong role in, for example, our
understanding of science and mathematics
practices (Danish & Enyedy, 2006; Greeno
& Hall, 1997; Hall, 1996; Lee & Sherin,
2006). Mediation and representational abili-
ties have been shown to be central in learn-
ing science and mathematics, especially for
expertise development (Pea, 1993b).
Participation and Identity
Research on mediation points to another
central aspect of situative perspectives,
which is that action is located within broader
systems of organization. Not only do peo-
ple modify their environment by creat-
ing mediating artifacts, as Scribner’s work
shows; these artifacts can, as Hutchins
(1995) argues, transform subsequent pos-
sibilities for action by embodying “partial
solutions to frequently encountered prob-
lems” (Hutchins, 1995, p. 374) of an indi-
vidual or group. That is, once introduced
into activity, forms of mediation that have
been useful in solving problems or resolv-
ing dilemmas (Lave, 1988) can be preserved
and passed on to subsequent generations.
The participation by a person or group of
people in practices making use of such a
preserved mediating artifact situates its user
within the tradition that developed, passed
on, and continues to maintain that artifact.
 52 cambridge handbook of engineering education research
Meaningful participation in practices is
a central concept within the situative
perspective. A great deal of research, much
of it building on the foundational ideas
of Vygotsky (1978, 1987), has focused on
how people develop into these traditions.
According to this perspective, it is through
situated engagement in motivated action
(Goodwin, 2000), using tools and in inter-
action with others, that we learn some of
our most essential skills. For instance, a child
first acquires language through its use with
parents. Clancey (1997) has conceptualized
an activity as a participation framework, that
is, “an encompassing fabric of ways of inter-
acting that shapes what people do” (p. 266).
So, through participating in broader social
systems, known variously as communities
of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger,
1998), activity systems (Engeström, 1987),
figured worlds (Holland, Lachicotte, Skin-
ner, & Cain, 1998), actor networks (Latour,
1999; Nespor, 1994), or Discourses (Gee,
1992), newcomers move along a trajectory
from “legitimate peripheral participation”
(Lave & Wenger, 1991), in which the authen-
tic practices of a community are within
their “horizon of observation” (Hutchins,
1995; Stevens, O’Connor, Garrison, Jocuns,
& Amos, 2008), but in which they have
less than full responsibility for their per-
formance, toward full participation in the
practices of the community (Paretti, 2008).
According to this view, all actions and activ-
ities are guided toward a larger goal and
learning is about understanding that larger
goal and aligning actions with it. In this view,
then, learning takes place not through trans-
mission of abstract knowledge, but through
engagement in the “knowledgeable skills”
that are realized in the everyday activities
of a community; that is, people become
good at the practices that they routinely par-
ticipate in, gaining understanding of how
to engage successfully under varying con-
ditions by flexibly adapting their perfor-
mance to the contingencies of particular
occasions.
It is important to note, however, that
learning, in this view, is understood as more
than mastery of the “knowledgeable skills”
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of a community. This is because, as Lave
and Wenger argue:
Activities, tasks, functions, and understand-
ings do not exist in isolation; they are part of
broader systems of relations in which they
have meaning. These systems of relations
arise out of and are reproduced and devel-
oped within social communities, which are in
part systems of relations among persons. The
person is defined by as well as defines these
relations. Learning thus implies becoming a
different person with respect to the possibili-
ties enabled by these systems of relations. To
ignore this aspect of learning is to overlook the
fact that learning involves the construction of
identities. (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 53)
Consequently, then, as one engages in the
practices of a community, she is not simply
becoming adept at carrying out those prac-
tices; she is also becoming identifiable as a
certain kind of person within the commu-
nity (Holland et al. 1998). It is important
to note here that identities are not deter-
mined by “the possibilities enabled by [the]
systems of relations” of a community; rather,
participants actively identify themselves and
others in terms of those possibilities, in the
process both reproducing and transforming
the community.
The Situative Perspective and
Engineering Learning
We believe that the situative perspective
offers many useful avenues for research
on engineering learning given three distin-
guishing characteristics of engineering learn-
ing: use of representations, alignment with
professional practices, and the emphasis
on design. The first element of engineer-
ing that is central to engineering learning
and practice is the use of representations.
Like many other practitioners, engineers are
surrounded by tools, and the purpose of
many of these tools is to lead to repre-
sentations that can help guide the work of
engineers. Graphs, charts, and visuals are
all examples of representations that engi-
neers use on a regular basis. As a matter
of fact, scholars have suggested that engi-
neering can be seen as a discipline that
 situative frameworks for engineering learning research
teaches students how to convert one form of
representation into another (McCracken &
Newstetter, 2001). For instance, many prob-
lems that engineering students work on, and
that a practitioner faces, are expressed as
text that needs to be converted into another
symbol system, often visual. A free body
diagram is a prime example of such a con-
version (also see Chapter 4 by Roth in this
volume). Increasingly, the role of produc-
ing representations is being played by digi-
tal technology, leading to an era of produc-
tion and exchange of representations that is
unprecedented in human history. The use of
tools is also leading to collaboration among
engineers – aided by representations –
that is swiftly but decisively reinventing
engineering cognition (Pea, 1985) and prac-
tice, akin to the change brought about by
the first wave of information technology use
in manufacturing (Zuboff, 1989) and now
being fostered by digital environments and
large-scale cyberinfrastructure. The role of
technological tools, particularly digital tools,
is extremely under-theorized in engineering
education and a perspective of representa-
tional mediation can prove useful to develop
a deeper understanding of technology use
and design. The potential exists for chang-
ing not only how we teach and learn, but
also our research practices themselves.
A second critical aspect of engineering
and engineering learning is its close associ-
ation with professional practice. A majority
of engineering students pursues the major
to be able to work as engineers. Therefore,
an inherently large aspect of their training is
learning to become a part of the commu-
nity of practice of professional engineers.
This includes developing an identity as an
engineer – in numerous ways and forms.
Professional practice is also collaborative in
nature and therefore learning to work as
part of groups and teams is essential to
engineering learning. Of course, work set-
tings have played a crucial role in inform-
ing early work in the field (Scribner, 1997a,
1997b; Wenger, 1998), and this is one aspect
of engineering learning that we believe
has been studied extensively by scholars
in aligned disciplines such as technical
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53
communication (Winsor, 1996), science edu-
cation (Lemke, 1997), technology stud-
ies (Bucciarelli, 1994), architecture (Schön,
1983), and also learning sciences (Hall &
Stevens, 1995; Stevens, 2000). Lemke (1997),
for instance, provides a comprehensive dis-
cussion of the disjuncture between school
practices and professional practices and the
effort that must be made to integrate stu-
dents’ school and professional trajectories.
The discussion has particular importance for
engineering learning given the professional
and applied nature of our practices. Yet, the
disjuncture between school-engineering and
work-engineering remains intact and signif-
icant efforts are needed to bridge this gap
(Stevens, Johri, & O’Connor, Chapter 7, this
volume). Engineers in the workplace often
say that even technical skills are easier to
learn on the job as compared to formal train-
ing. They often complain that very little of
what they learn in school is of any use to
them. There is an issue of situated learning
and transfer. Recent work has started to cap-
ture this tension (Stevens et al., 2008). There
has to be effort that links research with prac-
tice on an ongoing basis as the environment
for work and learning changes rapidly.
A final element of engineering learning
that is unique to it compared to mathe-
matics and science learning is design. Engi-
neers are by definition designers. Engineer-
ing design thinking and learning are central
to the development of an engineer (Dym,
Agogino, Eris, Frey, & Leifer, 2005). Yet,
design has its own unique ways of devel-
oping cognitive and situated skill require-
ments. It requires skills with materials, abil-
ity to work collaboratively, and the ability
to become part of a community of prac-
tice. Models of teaching design therefore dif-
fer from teaching engineering science-based
content to students. Design is also a use-
ful metaphor to think about engineering
learning research that can lead to innova-
tions. Design-based research (a descendent
of work on design experiments) is a useful
paradigm that can be adopted by engineer-
ing learning researchers and highlights that
ideas from core engineering disciplines can
be used to improve engineering learning – if
 54 cambridge handbook of engineering education research
applied with the right understanding of
context (see Chapter 25 by Kelly in this
volume).
Corresponding to the three characteris-
tics of engineering we have outlined ear-
lier, we believe that the three elements
of situated learning we have identified can
make a significant contribution to furthering
our understanding of engineering learning in
unique ways, similar to its role in biomedical
engineering education (Harris, Bransford,
& Brophy, 2002). These connections have
already started to manifest themselves in
recent articles in engineering education pub-
lications. For instance, Paretti (2008) uses
the situated learning approach, in conjunc-
tion with activity theory, to examine com-
munication practices in a capstone design
class. Pierrakos, Beam, Constantz, Johri,
and Anderson (2009) use emerging litera-
ture on situated identities to investigate the
different pathways and experiences of stu-
dents who persist with engineering versus
those who switch out of engineering. Similar
examination of identity has also been done
by Stevens et al. (2008). Gill, Sharp, Mills,
and Franzway (2008) build on anthropolog-
ical investigations of the workplace and the
communities of practice literature to draw
attention to gender issues in professional
engineering settings. They find that the pos-
itive self-image women had in school – in
relation to engineering – was not maintained
in the workplace given a lack of women role
models in immediately higher up positions
in the office hierarchy. Johri (2011) intro-
duces the concept of “sociomaterial brico-
lage” to capture the essence of engineering
work practices on global teams. Software
engineers in his study make do with what-
ever resources are available to them to
develop work practices that span geographic
dispersion, which, he argues, is the essence
of most engineering work. In relation to
digital technology, Johri and Lohani (2011)
draw on guided participation and commu-
nities of practice frameworks to examine
the role of representations in large engi-
neering classes. They argue that a content-
transfer model of technology use undercuts
the benefits that are available with digital
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technology – particularly pen-based tech-
nology – to engage students in mutual
construction of engineering representations.
These studies illustrate welcome progress
but we believe that enormous potential still
exists to make significant theoretical con-
tributions (Johri, 2010), and with that aim
in mind we have outlined some potential
research ideas in Table 3.1.
Critical Approaches to Situativity
The emergence over the past couple of
decades of situated theories of cognition
and learning have profoundly shaped the
learning sciences, to the point that situ-
ative approaches should now be viewed
not as a small critical movement in oppo-
sition to cognitivism but as a full-fledged
approach to studying learning that stands
alongside cognitivism. This development
has been remarkable. At the same time, vir-
tually since the onset of the rise of situa-
tive theories, there have been voices aris-
ing from within the situative approach that
have challenged some of the ways in which
that approach has developed and been used.
Indeed, Jean Lave, perhaps the most influ-
ential thinker in the development of situ-
ative theory, has herself recently critiqued
Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning (1991)
and some of the uses to which that work has
been put. Lave (2008) suggests that “[m]any
who use the concept of ‘communities of
practice’ now seem ignorant of the origi-
nal intent (and its limitations), and simply
assimilate it into conventional theory” (2008,
p. 283). In what follows, we outline sev-
eral of the internal critiques of situative the-
ory, suggesting that these might be useful in
sharpening the conceptualization and uses
of situativity within engineering education
research.
In her critical review, Lave (2008) points
out that Lave and Wenger’s original position
“was specifically not intended as a normative
or prescriptive model for what to do differ-
ently or how to create better classrooms or
businesses” (2008, p. 283; cf. Lave & Wenger,
1991, pp. 40–1). Lave and Wenger wrote:
 situative frameworks for engineering learning research
Table 3.1. Elements of Situativity and Implications for Engineering Learning Research
Relation to Engineering
Activities and Engineering work is usually
Interactions project based, accomplished
by teams, and is highly
collaborative.
Mediation in Social and Engineering is highly dependent
Material Context on mediating artifacts,
including representations, and
uses significant kinds and
amounts of physical materials
as well.
Participation and Identity Engineers have a strong
community of practice –
which often varies across
disciplines – especially when
they practice.
Engineering identity is distinct
entity.
legitimate peripheral participation is not itself
an educational form, much less a pedagogical
strategy or a teaching technique. It is an ana-
lytical viewpoint on learning, a way of under-
standing learning. . . . Undoubtedly, the ana-
lytical perspective of legitimate peripheral
participation could – we hope that it will –
inform educational endeavors by shedding
a new light on learning processes, and by
drawing attention to key aspects of learning
experience that may be overlooked. But this
is very different from attributing a prescrip-
tive value to the concept of legitimate periph-
eral participation and from proposing ways
of “implementing” or “operationalizing” it for
educational purposes. (Lave & Wenger, 1991,
pp. 40–1)
Two points concern us here with respect to
the above. First, it is important to note that
Lave and Wenger clearly did not oppose the
use of their work to “inform educational
endeavors,” and our view is that certain
implementations of their ideas have cer-
tainly been quite useful in “shedding a new
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55
Implications for Engineering Learning
Research
Empirical studies of team work and
collaboration
Empirical studies of role of interaction
in engineering practice (peer
learning, informal learning)
Empirical studies of role of
representations
Empirical studies of mediation by
tools used in learning and practice
Empirical studies of differences
between the use of representations
and materials in engineering design
and engineering science and their
relationship
Engineering community formation
Engineering identity formation and
differences in school versus work
identity
Situated identities and conflict
between identities
Open organizing and other emergent
forms of practices based on
technology use
light on learning processes, and . . . drawing
attention to key aspects of learning expe-
rience that may be overlooked.” Situated
learning theory has undoubtedly pushed
both its advocates and those whom it cri-
tiqued to understand learning in different,
we think deeper and more complex, ways
(e.g., Anderson, Greeno, Reder, & Simon,
2000; Sfard, 1998).
Second, though, we also agree with
Lave’s (2008) assessment that in some ways,
the uses of situated learning theory do
indeed “assimilate it into conventional the-
ory,” and that this assimilation threatens
to rob the approach of some of its critical
intent. It is important to note that we do not
mean to imply that attempts to create “cog-
nitive apprenticeships” (Brown et al., 1989)
or “practice fields” (Barab & Duffy, 2000)
are not a useful and legitimate aspect of the
situativity perspective. Rather, our aim is
to show how different ways of understand-
ing situated learning open up different ana-
lytic strategies in the study of engineering
 56 cambridge handbook of engineering education research
education. These different strategies are at
least potentially complementary, though we
would hasten to add that we think it is
always a good idea to consider critically the
effects, intended and unintended, of efforts
to change pedagogical practices.
It is informative to examine the ana-
lytic strategy adopted by Lave and Wenger.
These authors considered apprenticeships in
a variety of communities of practice (e.g.,
midwives, Alcoholics Anonymous groups,
naval navigation teams, tailor shops, super-
market meat departments) to show that
learning, understood as increasing access to
positively valued participation in a com-
munity, bears no necessary relationship to
formal educational objectives or structures.
This was part of the effort of theorists of sit-
uated cognition and learning to argue against
dominant ways of understanding learning
and its relationship to schooling, includ-
ing those of cognitivism. To accomplish
this, Lave and Wenger adopted a strate-
gic focus on communities of practice with
certain characteristics. They examined well-
established communities with clear bound-
aries (Nespor, 1994; O’Connor, 2001, 2003),
such that each community could be taken
to be enclosed and unchanging (Lave, 2008).
These communities were homogeneous
(Lave, 2008), in the sense that differences
among members were treated largely in
terms of their relative advancement toward
full participation in the community, rather
than, for example, in terms of the ways
that different participants had different his-
tories before arriving at the periphery of the
given community of practice, how they were
simultaneously located in other communi-
ties, and the like (Lave, 2008; Nespor, 1994;
O’Connor, 2001, 2003). Furthermore, Lave
and Wenger’s communities were, for the
most part, explicitly benign,4 in the sense
that it was possible, and expected, that all or
nearly all apprentices would move toward
full participation within that community
(Lave, 1996; O’Connor, 2001, 2003). This
focus was strategic. Lave and Wenger started
with communities of practice that were
arranged so as routinely to produce posi-
tive outcomes for virtually all participants
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and examined how learning was organized
in these communities. The observed absence
of explicit transmission of abstract knowl-
edge, together with the successful learning
of apprentices in these communities, pro-
vided important evidence against cogniti-
vist accounts of how successful learning
happens.
This strategy had unintended conse-
quences, however, and likely played into
another of Lave’s critiques of Lave and
Wenger. Lave (2008) suggests that “Situated
Learning has all too often been read as paint-
ing a view of social life as closed, harmo-
nious, and homogeneous, so that partici-
pants are ‘members’” (p. 288). This reading,
in our view, is one of the primary sources
of what Lave (2008) described as the assim-
ilation of situated learning theory, at least
as Lave and Wenger had conceptualized the
perspective, into conventional theory.
But Lave and Wenger (1991) had made it
quite clear that these should not be taken to
be general characteristics of communities of
practice, and in subsequent work they and
others have attempted to move beyond this
limited focus toward increased attention to
the heterogeneity of social practice and the
resultant tension and conflict that charac-
terize all social practice (e.g., Engestrom &
Cole, 1997; Kirshner & Whitson, 1998; Lave,
1993, 1996, 2008; Lemke, 1997; O’Connor,
2001, 2003; O’Connor & Allen, 2010; Penuel
& O’Connor, 2010). This work has called
for a move away from analysis of participa-
tion in communities and practices that are
assumed to be stable, bounded, and benign
and toward a focus on the interconnec-
tions among practices and the tensions that
arise as a result of this heterogeneity. Lave
(1993), for example, called for attention to
“interrelations among local practices,” sug-
gesting that “local practices must inevitably
take part in constituting each other, through
their structural interconnections, their inter-
twined activities, their common partici-
pants, and more” (Lave, 1993, p. 22).
This more complex approach to under-
standing what we earlier called “contex-
tualization” problematizes some of the
ways in which situative research has been
 situative frameworks for engineering learning research
conducted, especially work that has in-
volved attempts to design learning con-
texts around the ideas of Lave and Wenger
and others. A basic strategy for such “pre-
scriptive” (Lave, 2008; O’Connor, 2001)
work has been to retain some aspects of
traditional approaches to school learning
while at the same time transforming learning
contexts in fundamental ways. Recognizing
the social value of mastery of such “knowl-
edge domains” as science, mathematics, and
engineering, these researchers have kept the
cognitivist emphasis on these and other tra-
ditional school subjects. But prescriptive
approaches have diverged from cognitivism
by arguing for the inherent social and mate-
rial situatedness of knowledge and learning.
For example, Greeno et al. (1997) point out
that a major goal of their work is to “create
environments in which students can learn
to participate in practices of productive
inquiry and use of concepts and principles
that are characteristic of subject matter dis-
ciplines” (Greeno et al., 1997, p. 99). How-
ever, rather than being understood as a body
of abstract knowledge, these disciplines are
understood as communities of practice with
a range of what Lave (1991) calls “knowl-
edgeable skills.” Researchers and educators
working within a prescriptive approach to
situated learning explicitly model these
knowledgeable skills, and use these mod-
els to design “structures of participation”
(Greeno et al., 1997) for placement in class-
rooms and other learning contexts. So,
through participation in practices modeled
on those in particular target communities
or disciplines, students serve as apprentices
in the social practices associated with those
communities, a process that is intended to
result in “improved participation” in those
practices and communities (Greeno et al.,
1997).
From the point of view, though, of “ana-
lytical” (Lave, 2008) or “critical” (O’Connor,
2001) approaches to situated learning, work
within the prescriptive approach might be
seen as paying insufficient attention to con-
textualization processes. The problem here
is pointed to in Brown and colleagues’ (1989)
influential article on situated cognition and
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57
learning. These authors, in critiquing tra-
ditional approaches to schooling, including
those of cognitivism, argued:
School activity too often tends to be hy-
brid, implicitly framed by one culture, but
explicitly attributed to another. Classroom
activity very much takes place within the cul-
ture of schools, although it is attributed to the
culture of readers, writers, mathematicians,
historians, economists, geographers, and so
forth. Many of the activities students under-
take are simply not the activities of practition-
ers and would not make sense or be endorsed
by the cultures to which they are attributed.
This hybrid activity, furthermore, limits stu-
dents’ access to the important structuring and
supporting cues that arise from the context.
(Brown et al., 1989, p. 34)
This argument was a powerful and gener-
ative critique of cognitivism, to be sure.
However, it also can be seen as the basis
for a critique of the work of at least some
who take a prescriptive approach to situated
learning. The strategic focus of early criti-
cal research on benign, stable, and bounded
communities has often been adopted by pre-
scriptive researchers as a general strategy,
through their emphasis on highly stabilized
disciplines. This prescriptive work has more-
over tended to privilege “official” under-
standings of learning contexts by using a par-
ticular model of practice based in idealized
understandings of disciplines as the basis for
understanding the meaning of participation
and for assessing learning or “improved par-
ticipation” (Greeno et al., 1997). This strat-
egy, however, backgrounds some of the sub-
tle ways in which participants in activity
draw on heterogeneous resources, both “offi-
cial” and “unofficial,” as they negotiate the
meaning of the context, their ongoing activ-
ity, and their own emerging identities. As a
result, the kinds of learning environments
developed within prescriptive approaches
offer promising sites for adopting a critical
perspective on “the relationships between
local practices that contextualize the ways
people act together, both in and across con-
texts” (Lave, 1993). Insofar as these learning
environments involve an attempt to repro-
duce in schools conditions that will allow
 58 cambridge handbook of engineering education research
students to participate in the practices of
some “target” context, such as professional
communities of practice, outside of schools,
they are inherently heterogeneous con-
texts. Critical analyses of these sites exam-
ine more fully the various ways in which
participants orient themselves to these con-
texts and negotiate the meaning of their par-
ticipation, and such analyses also follow the
consequences of these negotiations beyond
the immediate event.
An example of such an analytical or crit-
ical approach to studying situated learning
within engineering education can be found
in O’Connor (2001, 2003), who studied par-
ticipation in an undergraduate engineering
project involving students from several uni-
versities with distinct institutional cultures
and of widely varying status. This project
involved the use of communication tech-
nologies such as videoconferencing to estab-
lish a “virtual organization” made up of stu-
dents from each of the schools. Because such
technologies allow for the possibility of con-
necting historically separated institutions,
they offer transformed possibilities for the
negotiation of social identities and relation-
ships. O’Connor showed that, as it devel-
oped, this project became shaped by preex-
isting relationships among its participating
institutions in ways that were unanticipated
by the project’s developers. For example,
participants’ “official” project roles, such as
project manager or control system designer,
and their “unofficial” institutional roles as
students at particular schools existed in ten-
sion with one another in participants’ inter-
actions throughout the project, and in the
course of constructing knowledge, partici-
pants also constructed identities that were
consistent with historically evolved status
differences among the schools. In this way,
participation in the project served as a
site not only for the negotiation of knowl-
edge, but also for the negotiation of who
the participants were, both with respect
to each other and within their discipline
more broadly. These included diminished
status for some students in the project,
and the reimagination of their possible tra-
jectories within the discipline. While the
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project could certainly have been viewed in
terms of increasing mastery of some of the
knowledgeable skills of engineering, such as
planning, design, analysis, and communica-
tion, such a focus pursued apart from more
critical understanding of the reproduction
of status differences would have disregarded
some central tensions and dilemmas that
faced students participating in the project
and disregarded the ways in which partic-
ipation in designed communities of prac-
tice is not only not benign, but can also
actively serve to marginalize the participa-
tion of some students (cf. Hodges, 1998;
Eisenhart & Finkel, 1998; and Tonso, 2006
for related analyses pertaining to science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics
[STEM]disciplines).
A second example of a critical approach
to situated learning in engineering educa-
tion is found in Stevens et al. (2008). These
authors conducted an ethnographic study of
learning across the four years of students’
undergraduate programs. However, rather
than adopting the common approach in sit-
uativity theory of looking for trajectories
of increasing knowledgeability and identi-
fication with respect to specific forms of
practice, this study focused more broadly
on the complex processes by which stu-
dents become, or do not become, engi-
neers. A central strategy of this work was
to look across three “dimensions” of learn-
ing. The first dimension, accountable dis-
ciplinary knowledge, is the one most tra-
ditionally associated with the concept of
learning. But instead of seeing learning as
the acquisition of a unified and stable body
of knowledge, Stevens et al. viewed dis-
ciplinary knowledge as at least potentially
both less unified and more variable in terms
of what practitioners know and do, and
sought to identify what counts as disci-
plinary knowledge in different situations.
The second dimension, identification, con-
cerned how a person both identifies with
engineering and is identified by others as an
engineer. The third dimension, navigation,
focused on how engineers-in-the-making
moved through and constructed various
pathways, both personal and institutional,
 situative frameworks for engineering learning research
both official and unofficial, as they pro-
gressed through their undergraduate careers.
The insights gained through this three-
dimensional framework were developed
partly through case studies. A comparison
of two such case studies focused on two stu-
dents at one school who were interested in
the same prestigious and competitive engi-
neering major. One, Simon, gained admis-
sion to that major after his second year;
the other, Jill, switched majors at that same
point without applying to an engineering
department. Simon and Jill were similar in
important ways, including that both had
roughly identical GPAs (which were lower
than the average of students admitted to
their desired major), and that both were
wavering in their respective identifications
with engineering as a major. There were
important differences, though. Jill relied
on an official navigational route into the
major and focused her efforts on her GPA.
When she foundered there, she saw few
other options for pursuing an engineering
major and became progressively less iden-
tified with the field, eventually electing to
leave. Simon, meanwhile, with the help
of a family friend who was a professor
in his desired engineering department, had
obtained a job at a departmental testing
facility. In large part as a result of his expe-
rience in this position, he was able to make
a case for admittance to the major, despite
his lower-than-average GPA. Both students
went on to be quite successful through
their final two years, Simon as an engi-
neering major and Jill as a business major.
Stevens et al. used these cases to argue
against a view of learning that is overly
focused either on individual knowledge or
on individual motivation. They argued that
Jill could be viewed as having insufficient
knowledge or motivation to succeed in engi-
neering; Simon’s success could be seen as the
unfolding of the more or less straightfor-
ward trajectory of an intelligent and moti-
vated student who followed his interests
until he ultimately became recognized for
his strengths. But Stevens et al. claimed that,
although these understandings are possible,
they are misleading in that they background
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59
the contingency of the pathways and the
extensive organizing work, by Simon and Jill
along with others, that shaped their careers
at every point along the way. This study
shows the value of attention to the multiple
and complex “dilemmas of becoming” expe-
rienced by students over an extended time
period, and how those dilemmas are shaped
by and resolved within a tension-laden insti-
tutional framework. Such work points to a
way beyond the focus by some prescriptive
situativity theorists on the progressive mas-
tery of specific disciplinary knowledgeable
skills, at least in the absence of the collec-
tive work that is done to make these notice-
able and consequential within always con-
tingent pathways, and especially within not
necessarily benign institutions that do not
allow for all to become equally successful
(cf. Varenne & McDermott, 1998).
A third and final example of a criti-
cal approach to learning within engineer-
ing education is taken from Eisenhart’s
recent work on the FREE Project (Female
Recruits Explore Engineering; e.g., Eisen-
hart, 2011). This project was designed to
allow for mostly minority, nonprivileged,
high-achieving girls to participate in an
engineering-focused after-school program.
At the start of the project during their
sophomore year in high school, and despite
strong performance in math and science,
fewer than 20% of these girls were con-
sidering studying engineering in college.
Among the central research interests was
to see the extent to which these girls,
once exposed to engineering as a discipline
and potential profession, subsequently pur-
sued engineering. During their time in the
after-school club, the girls attended engi-
neering career fairs on college campuses,
visited engineering labs, were introduced
to practicing engineers, undertook guided
Internet explorations of engineering, and
talked with researchers and advisors about
the pluses and minuses of engineering
careers. They also undertook their own
small-scale engineering projects, guided by
engineering consultants who helped with
specific projects; these design projects
included a playground for disabled children,
 60 cambridge handbook of engineering education research
clothing accented with light-emitting diode
(LED) displays, solar-powered jewelry, and
adjustable high-heeled shoes for women.
Among Eisenhart’s key findings were that,
although the girls knew almost nothing
about engineering when the FREE program
began, it was easy to spark their interest,
and that high school was not too late to
get them interested. The girls participated
eagerly, actively, and successfully in the var-
ious technical and nontechnical aspects of
the program. By the end of the program,
many began to think about majoring in engi-
neering in college. To use Lave and Wenger’s
(1991) terms, these girls had been participat-
ing on the periphery of the “community of
practice” of engineering, and were learning
both in the sense of gaining some of the
knowledgeable skills of the community and
also envisioning a trajectory for themselves
that would lead to fuller participation.
Several barriers effectively cut off this
trajectory for many of the girls, however.
Some of these barriers were economic,
including the high cost of attending col-
lege. This was made even more difficult
for some of the girls by a second barrier,
their immigration status; legislation in their
home state prevented undocumented stu-
dents from attending state schools at in-
state rates. Other challenges related to a
lack of social and cultural capital (Foor,
Walden, & Trytten, 2007) among the girls,
their families, and their schools. There was,
for example, a lack of well-communicated
information about colleges, costs, and schol-
arships, and about differences between high
school graduation requirements and college
entrance requirements. Many did not know
how to navigate online college or scholar-
ship applications. Most parents and older
siblings did not have their own experiences –
with either college entrance requirements or
financial aid – to help. The uncertainty intro-
duced by these challenges introduced still
others. These included challenges involv-
ing the social positioning in U.S. society of
women of color, for whom success in school
is tied deeply to their ability to counter
negative images of themselves and their
group (Hurtado, 1996). Their identities as
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students, as respectable persons, and as val-
ued members of their families (Lopez, 2003)
were at stake in the choices that they made
about attending college and the majors they
would pursue. In the face of these barri-
ers and the related fear and uncertainty,
the FREE girls scaled back college expecta-
tions and plans. Engineering, a “hard major,”
became especially risky, and most decided
that it was too much of a risk. Eisenhart
(2011) writes that:
. . . it does not seem that failure to pursue
engineering can be attributed to an engi-
neering education intervention program that
“did not work.” It cannot be attributed to
a lack of interest in engineering. It cannot
be attributed to discrimination, stereotyping,
or harassment in engineering. . . . The out-
come was due primarily to social, political
and economic barriers that interfered with
access to college, undermined academic con-
fidence, and threatened important identities
that had been nurtured in and were depen-
dent on school. . . . The girls responded to this
unfamiliar and threatening context by pro-
tecting their identities as they headed to col-
lege: They went, but they did so in ways that
limited their exposure to risks that threatened
their status as good students, respectable peo-
ple, and worthy family members. This practi-
cally eliminated engineering from serious con-
sideration. (p. 20)
Eisenhart’s study complicates the prescrip-
tive idea that learning involves the cre-
ation of “environments in which students
can learn to participate in practices of pro-
ductive inquiry and use of concepts and
principles that are characteristic of sub-
ject matter disciplines” (Greeno et al., 1997,
p. 99). The FREE program certainly was
successful in allowing its members to par-
ticipate in this way. But Eisenhart’s work
also points to a major limitation of pre-
scriptive work based on Lave and Wenger’s
apprenticeships, specifically, that trajecto-
ries beyond the learning context are rarely
examined. This was not the case for Lave
and Wenger, whose apprentices were almost
literally taken into their futures by com-
munity “old-timers,” who actively organized
the movement of their apprentices along a
 situative frameworks for engineering learning research
trajectory toward a valued place in the
community. Eisenhart’s work points to the
importance of attending to the organizing
of trajectories in complex, often non-benign
contemporary conditions.
Eisenhart’s work resonates with recent
arguments that, if learning is conceived as
it is in critical situative approaches in terms
of access to valued participation within the
complex systems of relations that charac-
terize contemporary society (cf. Sawyer &
Greeno, 2009, p. 348), then research on
learning must centrally involve attention
to processes of the organizing of processes
through which people move along trajecto-
ries into their futures (O’Connor & Allen,
2010; Penuel & O’Connor, 2010), including
the conditions in which people become rec-
ognized (Gee, 1999; Taylor, 1992), or not, as
valued participants in social worlds.
Conclusion
Complexity of human social and engineered
life has never been higher. This significantly
affects our ability to make sense of the
world around us and to act intelligently.
This change is reflected in the professional
lives of engineers where they have to work
with novel technologies, with a diversity of
people around the world, as part of highly
interdisciplinary teams, and on projects that
are complex both in scale and expertise.
What engineers need is adaptive expertise
that allows them to be both innovative and
efficient at what they do (Bransford, 2007;
also see Chapter 12 by McKenna in this vol-
ume). From an educator’s viewpoint, this is
the world we inherit and need to prepare our
students to enter. Therefore, it is impera-
tive that we reflect on the skill development
we need to facilitate and design imple-
mentable learning environments for our stu-
dents. This forms the core agenda for the
emerging discipline of engineering educa-
tion (Haghigi, 2005). In this chapter we have
laid out a broad theoretical agenda and an
analytical framework to serve as a toolkit
for understanding and designing engineering
learning to make consistent progress toward
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at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139013451.006
61
this goal of improving the education of
engineers.
Footnotes
1. In addition to the scholars cited above, read-
ers can refer to the following edited volumes
for in-depth work on this topic: Perspectives
on Socially Shared Cognition (Resnick, Levine,
& Teasley), Handbook of Situated Cognition
(Robbins & Aydede, 2009), Mind, Culture &
Activity (Cole, Engeström, & Vasquez, 1997),
Everyday Cognition (Rogoff & Lave, 1984),
Perspectives on Activity Theory (Engeström,
Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1999), Communication
and Cognition at Work (Engeström & Mid-
dleton, 1998), Sociocultural Studies of Mind
(Wertsch, Rı́o, & Alvarez [Eds.], 1995), Dis-
tributed Cognitions (Salomon, 1993), and Sit-
uated Cognition: Social, Semiotic, and Psy-
chological Perspectives (Kirshner & Whitson,
1997).
2. Another response would be to reject the idea
of “application” and to look instead at the ratifi-
cation or recognition of participation as appro-
priate on a given occasion (e.g., Stevens et al.,
2008).
3. Different approaches within the broader um-
brella of situativity theory (e.g., ethnomethod-
ology, mediated action theory, cultural-
historical activity theory) understand action or
activity in different ways. It is not our aim to
differentiate these different perspectives here.
It is sufficient for our purposes to point out that
each of these approaches takes action, interac-
tion, or activity in some form to be central and
primary in the analysis of cognition and learn-
ing.
4. In practice, most contexts are not this benign,
including in engineering education. The litera-
ture is full of studies that document the prob-
lem engineering education has typically faced
in retaining students (see Chapter 16 by Licht-
enstein, Chen, Smith, and Maldonado in this
volume).
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