Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International JournalGendered tensions: engineering student's resistance to communication instructionKatie R. Sullivan April A. Kedrowicz

Article information:To cite this document:Katie R. Sullivan April A. Kedrowicz, (2012),"Gendered tensions: engineering student's resistance tocommunication instruction", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, Vol. 31 Iss 7 pp. 596- 611Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02610151211263405

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Gendered tensions: engineeringstudent’s resistance to

communication instructionKatie R. Sullivan

Department of Business Administration,Lund University, Lund, Sweden, and

April A. KedrowiczCenter for Engineering Leadership,

University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw from the authors’ experiences, as women teachingCommunication in a College of Engineering and mechanical engineering students’ evaluations, tohighlight student resistance to both practices and bodies deemed “feminine.”Design/methodology/approach – The authors examine how the masculine discipline of engineeringmight construct a learning environment that is incompatible with feminist ideals. This is illuminatedwhen engineering students are required to learn communication skills from female instructors.Findings – The authors’ analysis suggests that students’ resistance to communication instruction isgendered. Students often constructed hierarchical relationships where communication was considered“soft” in relation to the “hard” science of engineering instead of integral to the discipline and profession.Students resisted by expressing a lack of utility of information, devaluing feedback and instruction,degrading communication teachers, and questioning their bodies.Originality/value – The paper discusses implications of a gendered educational context and suggestsways interdisciplinary instruction can be utilized to enhance gender diversity.

Keywords United States of America, Universities, Mechanical engineering, Students, Gender,Higher education, Communication skills, Sciences

Paper type Research paper

All of her exercises felt like getting kicked in the balls (Male Mechanical Engineering studenton communication activities).

This quote highlights an engineering student’s visceral reaction and resistance tocommunication instruction offered in an engineering classroom. Students resistinstructors and instruction for a variety of reasons (Boren, 2001) includingaltered expectations surrounding assignments or classroom norms (Paulsel andChory-Assad, 2004) or distrust of pedagogies (Seas, 2006). We argue that students’resistance might also be gendered. Specifically, students might identify academicdisciplines as either more or less masculine or feminine (Biglan, 1973; Hartley et al.,2004) and use this knowledge to make sense of their “appropriate” role within – oraway from – a discipline (Lackland and De Lisi, 2001; Nosek et al., 2009). As such,a student might resist instruction or instructors that pose a threat to their genderidentity or identities (Butler, 2004). In the quote above, the student invokes his bodyto suggest that communication exercises result in a temporary, yet painful loss ofmasculinity. It also shows that gendered resistance may become particularly salientwhen students engage disciplines outside of their chosen major, or when twoacademic disciplines – engineering and communication, in this case – merge.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available atwww.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: AnInternational JournalVol. 31 No. 7, 2012pp. 596-611r Emerald Group Publishing Limited2040-7149DOI 10.1108/02610151211263405

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Academic disciplines are dynamic, embodied, and gendered. They can be “read” forthe gendered assumptions they produce and maintain. Although disciplines are notinherently masculine or feminine, they are often imagined to embody these orientations,thus producing dichotomies. For instance, the “hard” sciences are often viewed as“masculine” subjects while comparatively, those in the “softer” humanities are seenas feminine (Biglan, 1973; Hedges, 1987; Frost, n.d.; Lackland and De Lisi, 2001; Noseket al., 2009). Scholars studying gender and academic choice note that both male andfemale students commonly select a major that is congruent with their desired identities(Lackland and De Lisi, 2001; O’Neil et al., 1986), thereby staving off most genderedtensions. However, there are several contexts where students – perhaps due to lack ofchoice, the merging of disciplines, academic content, or the addition of gendered bodies –encounter tensions in the classroom. In engineering, this tension exists in part due toa move away from training that emphasizes narrow technological competence towardeducation that seeks to broaden students’ professional competencies in communication,teamwork, and ethical understanding.

This paper explores the gendered nature of one specific educational framework, theintegration of communication into engineering classrooms, referred to as communicationin the disciplines (CID) (Dannels, 2001). CID represents a unique educational approachwhere disciplines collaborate for the purpose of enhancing students’ communicationcompetence. Specifically, in a CID classroom, communication occupies a central positionin the curriculum of non-communication disciplines to help students learn through andabout communication. This call for communication competence is mandated byinternational external accrediting boards like ABET and calls from industry leaders fornew graduates to have communication skills. The specific CID culture we studied wasmechanical engineering with integrated speaking, writing, and teamwork instruction.In this case, engineering and communication represent two disparate disciplines that canbe read as a gendered dialectic, where engineering is masculine in relation to a feminizednotion of communication (Basow, 1995; Stonyer, 2002; Weedon, 1997).

Our aim is to understand how mechanical engineering students relate to integratedcommunication instruction. This aim surfaced as a result of our observations that someengineering students displayed a subtle, yet pervasive resistance to communicationinstruction and instructors that did not seem wholly tied to content or instructional issues.Therefore, we sought to unpack, on a more systematic level than our observations allowed,the ways in which students resist integrated instruction through course evaluations.

At a basic level, resistance to instruction negatively impacts teaching and learning;however, resistance could also signal deeper gendered tensions between engineering andcommunication disciplines. Therefore, this examination allowed us to engage thebroader social implications of gendered disciplines, as well as the practical dilemmas ofmechanical engineering students’ resistance to communication instruction andinstructors. On a more personal level, our exploration also allowed us to reflect on ourexperiences of facing resistance and being a “gendered other” at our own university.Feminisms within universities are dynamic and gendered norms shift across disciplines.In a time when cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning is paramount, we ask,what happens when a “soft” body enters a “hard” classroom?

Academic disciplines as gendered spacesAcademic disciplines constitute cultures with their own sets of rules, norms, andgendered expectations. When cultures merge, some resistance is likely from membersof both groups. Cultures often clash due to gendered tensions where “members [y]

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lack understanding of the other such that the feelings of one become the anti-feelings ofthe other” (Snow, 1993, p. 11). The culture of engineering education (Cronin and Roger,1999; Lewis et al., 1998; Tonso, 1996) and the development of a gendered engineeringidentity (Dryburgh, 1999; Stevens et al., 2008; Tonso, 2006) have been the focus of muchresearch. Gender inequities in engineering, are well documented (Basow, 1995;Blickenstaff, 2005; Cockburn, 1985; Guzzetti and Williams, 1996) and are both constitutiveof and constitute a masculine culture (Hacker, 1983; Lewis et al., 1998; Tonso, 1996).

The underrepresentation of women and resultant masculine culture, particularly inthe USA, where this research was conducted, is furthered by the privileging of so-calledmasculine characteristics such as competition, rationality, objectivity, and impersonality(e.g. Bilimoria et al., 2008; Cockburn, 1985). Godfrey and Parker (2010), in a study thatforegrounds engineering education culture, as opposed to engineering professionalculture, developed a conceptual framework of the culture of engineering educationcharacterized by an engineering way of thinking, an engineering way of doing, earlyidentification as an engineer, and conditional acceptance of difference. This frameworkalso highlights engineering as a masculine culture that values problem solving, practicalapplication of knowledge, and difficult subject matter. Students develop earlyidentification as engineers; people who are high achieving in math and science andwho invoke the norm of hegemonic masculinity. Finally, students embrace differenceconditionally, such that “differences at a personal level, such as race, gender, or priorexperience, are tolerated and accepted provided the attributes of ‘being an engineer’ aremet” (Godfrey and Parker, 2010, p. 15). This quote suggests that diversity is present andallowable, so far as the primary performance is that of an engineer. It begs the questionof how much diversity one can truly exhibit, particularly when one’s training, discipline,or body fails to fit into the identities available to engineers.

Disciplining metaphors: language as an organizing conceptPart of the culture clash between communication and engineering can be traced todiscourses that highlight the polarity between academic disciplines and that invokegender, albeit subtly. The use of metaphors can be a signifier of gendered disciplines.Metaphors are an important socializing agent ( Jablin, 1982, 2001; Staton-Spicer andDarling, 1986) as they legitimate actions and guide behaviors (Lakoff and Johnson,1980). They also shape how we see and make sense of the world by orienting ourperceptions, conceptualizations, and understanding of one thing in light of another(Putnam et al., 1996, p. 377). In addition, metaphors act to create common ground formembers of an academic discipline, including students. For instance, students usemetaphors as a way to make sense of differences, place them selves in relations toothers, and to construct hierarchical relationships.

A common set of dichotomous metaphors used to describe engineering andcommunication, respectively are “hard science” and “soft science” or “soft skills”(Biglan, 1973). Hartley et al. (2004) note, “most people, both lay and academic, thinkof various subject disciplines as being ‘hard’ or ‘soft,’ with others in between” (p. 189).Typically, these metaphors are used to distinguish replicable science fromnon-replicable science. However, the term soft science is also used pejoratively(Frost, n.d.; Hedges, 1987). Biglan (1973), in a study on how academics rate disciplineson a matrix of hard vs soft, suggests that disciplines are rated on their degrees ofdifficulty or “hardness,” suggesting that soft science is easier than hard science. It hasbeen noted that many engineering students view anything worth doing as that whichis hard, and this hardness is juxtaposed by those subjects that are soft, easy and

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subsequently, devalued (Godfrey and Parker, 2010). Bordo (1999) notes this valuejudgment when she says that hard science is often viewed as the only kind thatoperates with rigor and scholarly virility. Research stemming from the social sciencesand humanities are labeled as “what everybody knows anyway,” because topics are, bydesign, often tied to everyday life (Frost, n.d.).

The metaphors of hard and soft also hold the weight of gendered distinctions. It isimportant to note that there is nothing inherently masculine or feminine about anacademic discipline. However, the fact that there are significantly more men in the“hard” sciences and more women in the “soft” ones indicates that there may be agendered story to tell (Nosek et al., 2009). Exploring the broader meaning behind theterms “hard” and “soft” allows us to investigate how the terms might carry genderedunderstanding even when they are used in the micro-practice of distinguishingacademic disciplines. In many ways, these competing metaphors constitute a hierarchywhereby ideologies and practices considered “feminine” are devalued as lessacademically important. Mirroring larger gendered power structures, the languageused to classify academic disciplines works to maintain a gendered status quo.

Soft bodies/hard scienceDiscursive metaphors of “hard” and “soft” are not only gendered, but also embodied. Aninterpretive framework in communication studies has long noted that language structuressocial reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Recently, communication scholars haveexpanded this framework in an effort to account for the dialectical relationships betweendiscourse and materiality (Ashcraft and Mumby, 2004; Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007;Cheney and Cloud, 2006; Styhre, 2004; Trethewey et al., 2006). This view often foregroundsthe body and embodiment and notes the ways in which discourses shape our embodiedexperiences and visa versa (Shilling, 1993). This highlights that word “matter” and thatmembers of disciplinary communities must unpack what words connote.

One way to explore the discourse/materiality dialectic is through “sustainedexploration of the discourses that work to construct our symbolic and material selves”(Trethewey et al., 2006, p. 125). Therefore, we can examine academic metaphors for theways in which they shape gendered dichotomies. “Hard” sciences, when in relationshipwith “soft” skills, symbolizes both engineering and the male body. “Soft” skills thussymbolize the antithesis of engineering, in this case, communication and the female body.

The metaphors of hard science and soft skills have the potential to invoke embodiedand masculine fears that may lead to resistance to all things “soft.” Iris Young (2005), inan essay entitled Throwing Like a Girl, explains that young boys learn at an early ageto distinguish themselves from girls. She notes that one of the worst insults young boysthrow at other boy’s circles surround the feminine: sissy, girly, sally, and soft. “To beexposed as ‘soft’ at the core is one of the worst things a man can suffer in this culture”(Bordo, 1999, p. 55). Boys carry with them the need to distinguish and separatethemselves from the feminine as they grow into men. Therefore, the leap can be madethat for some men the fear of being feminine is so great that being in a soft field orproficient in soft skills might invoke anxiety and resistance.

The desire to avoid being “soft” also impacts male students’ college major. Lacklandand De Lisi (2001) examined gender and college major choice. They discovered thatcollege students view helping professions as feminine and the sciences as masculine.Further, male students avoid “feminine” majors more so than female students avoidmasculine majors, perhaps because men in western culture are disciplined for beingfeminine. These disciplining messages are pervasive in boys’ lives and persist well into

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maturation. In the USA, boys are socialized, more so than girls, from a young age tochoose a proper (read: masculine) profession (Lupton, 2000; Monaghan, 2002). Whenboys fail do to this, they are often pointed out as different at best, and suspect at worst(Sargent, 2000; Seidler, 1997). Long (1991), in a study on masculinity and sciencecareers, notes, “[y] that boys receive significantly more disapproval for cross-sexbehavior than do girls” (p. 214). Far from benign, the academically based metaphorsof “hard” and “soft” can then be viewed as disciplinary mechanisms as much asexplanatory mechanisms.

Protecting masculinity is often not something men view as a choice, but as animportant element of identity (Seidler, 1997). Thus, it seems likely that men will be,consciously or unconsciously, anxious about their standing as “hard” not “soft.” Thecollege classroom, then, becomes a space for students to read and infer gendercongruency. The discussion above highlights that disciplines are markers of gender.Teachers, and their bodies, are also markers of both disciplines and gender. This mightbe particularly salient in disciplines like engineering in the USA where the percentageof female tenured engineering faculty is a low 7.2 percent (Abt Associates Inc, 2004).

An important question becomes, what happens when a “soft” body enters a “hard”classroom? When the classroom is contextualized as a space of identity constructionand collision, the female body teaching in a “masculine” discipline is problematicbecause her body (regardless of performances) marks her as other (Basow, 1995; Swan,2005). Bailey (1996) notes that students tend not to view female teachers as experts onthe subject matter or they view the subject as less important when a woman teaches it.In addition, women are often sexualized by male students in the classroom, makingthem feel vulnerable, silly, and powerless (Atkinson, 2008). The female body teachingin a masculine field might invoke students’ resistance to feminization. This resistancemay be heightened when the female body is also teaching “feminine” concepts (Lupton,2000; Monaghan, 2002).

We use the metaphors of hard science and soft skills as a backdrop to explore howgendered discourses shape student responses to communication instruction and howtheir responses are not solely tied to course content and instruction, but also tomasculine identity challenges. Specifically, we advance the following researchquestion: how does gender play a role in how mechanical engineering students respondto communication instruction and instructors?

MethodsThis project idea emerged when we noticed both overt and subtle student resistance tocommunication instruction and repeated commentary on instructors’ bodies. Our rolesas program director and communication instructor of an integrated engineering-communication program (that we will call E-COMM) afforded us the opportunity to beactive participants in delivering integrated communication instruction and assessingits effectiveness. We saw resistance in the form of inattentiveness, disruptive classroombehaviors, lack of engagement with communication assignments and activities, andoccasionally rude or hostile comments to instructors. When students were asked toprovide qualitative feedback on instruction, a small percentage offered inappropriateor unconstructive comments that marginalized communication content and instructors.We could not help but notice that these student comments and behaviors had a decidedlygendered tone.

We do not mean to suggest that our classrooms were constant gendered battlefield.Rather, we give more weight and attention to students’ gendered responses for several

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reasons. First, as a program director, one of the author’s primary aims was tolearn about problems and seek solutions to enhance the program as well as studentsatisfaction. Both authors uphold a commitment to engage the dilemma of a lack ofgender diversity in our own university and within the engineering discipline. Finally,we focus on student evaluations because we wanted to understand their classroomexperiences.

Our purpose was to explore the gendered nature of student resistance in relation tocommunication instruction and instructors. Data for this project was gathered as partof an on-going collaboration between an integrated communication program (that wewill refer to as E-COMM) and the Mechanical Engineering Department at a largewestern university.

SettingThe E-COMM program represents the CID framework because discipline-specificcommunication instruction is embedded into undergraduate engineering classes andtaught by communication instructors. Direct communication instruction accounts forapproximately 25 percent of all class time. E-COMM instructors are co-teachers in theengineering classroom, developing assignments, delivering lectures, evaluatingstudent work, and suggesting final grades. Instructors spend on average ten hoursper week with students both in the classroom and during required outside consultationsessions and students’ grades are significantly determined by their ability tocommunicate effectively through speaking, writing, and teamwork. Students weremade aware of the importance of these skills from their professors, advisors, guestspeakers from industry, and E-COMM marketing materials about how employers arelooking for graduates with communication proficiency.

Two female E-COMM instructors were assigned to the freshman and senior classesfor six semesters. The instructors were doctoral candidates from the communicationand writing departments. Both were in their late 20s during the time this data wascollected. The engineering professors and the teaching assistants for these classeswere both male, making the communication instructors the only female bodies chargedwith instruction. Overall, only 14 percent of faculty in the Mechanical EngineeringDepartment was female. The demographic make-up of the students in both classes wasoverwhelmingly male, o10 percent of students were female in either class. TheE-COMM instructors and nearly all of the students were white. We realize that genderis not the only salient feature to address when seeking diversity. Ideally, this studywould explore how gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability level intersect. However,we did not collect specific information about race or ethnicity, socio-economic status,ability levels, or sexuality, and we hesitate to make assumptions about these subjectivities.

Data sourcesOur immersion in E-COMM allowed us to informally observe the culture (andsometimes cultural clashes) between communication and engineering. However, ourformal data were course evaluations. Basow (1995) notes that course evaluations canprovide an overview of gendered dynamics: “A complex picture emerges when studentevaluations are examined as a function not only of professor gender, but also of studentgender, gender-typing of the discipline, status of the professor, and gender-typedcharacteristics of the professors” (p. 656).

Our data set consisted of course evaluations from 11 courses over four semesters.Four sets of evaluations came from an entry-level design course, three sets of evaluations

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came from a senior level design capstone class, three sets of evaluations came from asophomore level manufacturing class and one set of evaluations came from a junior levellab class. Each course incorporated speaking and writing assignments as studentswork in teams to complete a project. To prepare students for the team presentationsand various design documents, E-COMM graduate students provided instruction inclass and also worked with student teams to provide in-depth feedback andconsultations on completed communication assignments. The E-COMM instructors werethe same across courses.

We distributed course evaluations near the end of each semester. The universitymanages quantitative formal evaluations for each class. Because our aim was to gainqualitative feedback on how students perceived communication and instruction,we wrote an additional assessment survey that contained several open-endedquestions designed to elicit student feedback on the effectiveness and utility of thecommunication instruction, consultations, and instructors. Student responses to theseopen-ended questions were compiled and became the data set for this project. Theevaluations yielded approximately 73 pages of single-spaced text.

Data analysisTo analyze this data we read each response to the prompt: why do you (not) thinkcommunication skills are important to engineering? Responses to this prompt allowedus to see how engineering students’ perceive communication in relation to engineering(i.e. important or not important and why). Next, we focussed on condensing the data.That is, we read each response to all of the remaining open-ended questions and codedeach according to the valence of the feedback (positive or negative). Since we wereparticularly curious about student resistance to instruction and instructors, weextracted the negative, critical, and inappropriate (i.e. unrelated to communicationcontent or instruction) comments from the larger data set. It is important to note thatthe E-COMM program has received a great deal of support and accolades from bothfaculty and the national accreditation board. Likewise, students throughout the Collegeof Engineering see the value in this integrated program and seek out assistance fromE-COMM instructors beyond regular class meetings and responsibilities; however, wepurposefully focussed on instances of resistance to understanding the gendereddynamics at play in the CID classroom. Approximately 15 percent of studentcomments were illustrative of resistance and of those, 5 percent were overtly gendered,meaning the students mention the instructor’s sex and gendered qualities, typically ina derogatory manner. However, our analysis will show how even the seemingly“ungendered” comments are actually reflective of underlying hierarchical genderassumptions. We realize that students can and should comment upon content andinstruction that is not conducive to a productive learning environment. However,in this project, we define resistance as comments that fail to tap into concretediscussions about content, instructor style or assignments and instead suggest thatstudent dissatisfaction has to do with the fact that the content, instructors, andassignments are “not engineering.” We provide examples of what this resistance lookslike in the analysis.

Working with our condensed data set, we numbered and coded (Miles andHuberman, 2004; Strauss and Corbin, 1998) each student response for its content aboutcommunication instruction or the communication instructor. We separated commentsabout instruction from comments about the instructor into two separate lists. Welooked for thematic categories among the instruction and instructor comments.

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Specifically, we asked the question, “what about the instruction or instructor makesstudents respond negatively?” We relied on student feedback to learn more about thegender dynamics that might have influenced student resistance to E-COMM instructionand instructors.

ResultsThis research shows how gender norms impact interdisciplinary work. The mechanicalengineering students in our study at times resisted the presence of communicationinstruction and instructors in the engineering classroom. We relied on student feedbackto explore hierarchies and student resistance to communication integration, communicationcontent, and the instructor’s body.

Disciplinary hierarchies: resisting integrated content and instructorsOur analysis of student feedback points to their acknowledgment of the overallimportance of communication to engineering. However, students’ comments suggestthey dislike the integration of communication content and instructors in the engineeringclassroom. A close reading of students’ comments reveals the disciplinary hierarchiesstudents invoke to resist integrated instruction.

Despite students’ appreciation for the role communication plays in their engineeringwork, they do not think communication should be integrated into the engineeringclassroom:

I think the prevailing attitude is that engineers cannot write. Therefore, the [engineering]instructor has asked for help improving our writing. However important writing is, thewriting emphasis must not outweigh the course needs for focusing on learning technicalinformation. To outweigh the technical needs is an attempt to reduce an engineering class to awriting one, which is unacceptable.

This student’s comment suggests several things. The first is that the communicationinstruction is not integrated, but rather an “add-on” (Dannels, 2003). It also suggestsa hierarchy where engineering must outweigh communication skills, or the class willrisk becoming a writing one. However, in this case communication instruction wasno 425 percent of the course focus. Lectures and activities concerning engineering faroutweighed lectures and activities regarding writing. The student’s own languageillustrates the hierarchy of engineering over communication, such that the presence ofcommunication instruction somehow reduces the class. Other students expressresentment that an engineering class might look too similar to a writing class: “Thepurpose is primarily to convey technical learning, not to co-enroll in Writing 100.” Itseems that students resist integrated communication content because any inclusion ofcommunication challenges the engineering focus of the course and in so doing,marginalizes the class. In other words, students appear to resist integration because itdetracts from the “real work” of engineering.

A student notes that communication instruction has its place in a communicationclassroom: “I think the university should have hard writing requirements for engineers.Why are engineers not having to take advanced writing courses from the writingdepartment?” The student appears to believe that rigoros or hard writing requirementsare beneficial, but that they should not be part of engineering education. We can readthis comment as “communication is fine, but not in my classroom.” Students’ resistanceto integrated communication instruction could stem from their socialization into adisciplinary culture and subsequent negotiation of identities. That is, the culture of

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engineering is one that is hard, masculine, and technical; it is not soft, feminine, andcommunication-focussed. In other words, they do not want “soft skills” incorporatedinto a classroom where “hard” work gets done, thus reinforcing the engineering way ofdoing (Godfrey and Parker, 2010). Students might not see communication as part of the“real work” of engineering in the same way that they do for design, problem solving,and computer skills. McIlwee and Robinson (1992) offer an explanation based onsocialization for why this perception might hold:

To be taken as an engineer is to look like an engineer, talk like an engineer, and act likean engineer. To engage in using tools, tearing apart machinery, and building things: afascination with and desire to talk at length about these activities is part of the interactionaldisplay of the culture of engineering (p. 21).

In addition to resisting the integration of communication content, students also appearedto resist the integration of communication instructors. Specifically, they found little valueto communication instructors providing discipline-specific instruction. Instead, students’comments suggest that E-COMM instructors are less valuable because they are notexperts in engineering. “They didn’t have an engineering background, so in my opinion,they weren’t entitled to know what they’re talking about.” This comment ignores the factthat E-COMM instructors are not teaching engineering but rather, communication,something they are well trained to do.

In lieu of communication instructors, mechanical engineering students would ratherhave someone with engineering experience provide instruction on communication asthese comments illustrate: “The communication instruction provides nothing thatcurrent engineering professors can’t already provide to students.” “I would like tohear from someone who has actual engineering experience talk about communication.”Despite the communication content, theoretical frameworks, and pedagogicalknowledge that E-COMM instructors bring to the classroom, it seems engineeringstudents afford more credibility to all things “communication” when taught byengineers. Students would rather be taught communication skills by an engineeringundergraduate student, as illustrated by this comment, “Communications majors arenot effective at applying their knowledge to engineering. A Mechanical Engineeringmajor with some background in communication would be better suited to thisposition.” Student comments appear to critique the integration of communicationinstruction and the topic itself rather than the instructors or course content. This isevidenced by the fact that their comments point to the communication instructors’lack of credibility and relevant knowledge stemming from their background incommunication, as opposed to engineering.

We doubt engineering students would trust an instructor of communication to teachengineering. Why then, is it acceptable to claim that one with a degree in engineeringcan teach communication? The answer calls to the foreground the presumed hierarchyimplicit in the metaphors of hard and soft science and the gendered tensions invokedby merging disciplines. Communication is seen as soft and easy, while engineering isviewed as hard and difficult. Recall that these metaphors are not simply benign termsused to distinguish replicable science from non-replicable science. Rather, soft scienceis often used pejoratively (Frost, n.d.; Hedges, 1987) and viewed as less difficult thanhard science (Biglan, 1973). Thus, students believe that someone trained in a hardscience, like engineering, is surely able to teach a soft, easier skill like communication.Also, recall that these terms hold gendered and embodied meaning and that men areoften socialized to reject a “soft” identity.

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Intellectual hierarchies: resisting the bullshitWhile most students view communication as important, yet subordinate toengineering, some seemingly view learning communication as a complete waste oftime, because it is devoid of any intellectual value. This exchange illustrates, question:“What did you learn about written communication in this course?” Answer: “I learnedthat I don’t need to use the bullshit and flowery language that they want forhumanities.” Similarly, another student notes: “Ideally, I would like to learn more aboutengineering and manufacturing rather than kissing ass, engineering politics, and othercommunication type bullshit.” In part, it seems students do not think communicationhas intellectual value because communication is merely about finessing words orideas to please others or pursue personal agendas, rather than competence in a specificskill set.

For other students, communication lacks intellectual value because it is somethingthey do every day, and thus, already know how to do. This implies that there is no skillor room for growth in one’s communication as these comments illustrate: “I alreadyknow how to work as a team.” “We work in teams in every class, we should just knowit by now.” “I took a communications and writing class to learn this stuff. I consider myknowledge here sufficient.” Not only do students feel like they “already” knowteamwork and communication, the underlying assumption is that students are simplyproficient by casually doing these activities. That is, by merely participating on a team,students have effective interpersonal communication strategies to facilitate productive,satisfactory team experiences. As a result, no direct instruction from a communicationspecialist is necessary.

We do not mean to argue that proficiency – in a variety of subjects and activities –cannot be achieved outside of a college classroom. However, we do note that thesestudents are claiming that casual knowledge of communication activities is sufficientfor engineers. This “one-and-done” mentality surrounding communication skilldevelopment is in direct contrast to engineering proficiency. That is, students wouldlikely never assume that their engineering knowledge is sufficient after completing onedesign project in one class. Again, this points to a hierarchy where communication isless rigoros than engineering. In addition, what students might mean is that theycommunicate sufficiently, not effectively, and some appear to have little interest inlearning, thus, subtly resisting communication.

Overt resistance is demonstrated when students claim that they will not incorporatethe instructor’s feedback: “I will take some of the ideas with me, but for the most part,I will continue to present the same.” “I haven’t looked at most of the comments on ourpapers, so I guess I didn’t utilize the feedback at all.” Despite the fact that students’grades are dependent upon incorporating E-COMM instructors’ feedback, they wouldrather ignore the suggestions at the expense of a higher grade on engineeringcommunication assignments. Much like students’ views of communication contentlacking intellectual value, instruction and feedback about communication lacksvalue as well: “I might use it [feedback] for a good laugh.” Certainly this impliesresistance, but some students resisted communication in an extreme form as the nextcomment illustrates: “I was absent for all of the communication lectures.” In linewith our observations, on designated “communication days” student attendance wasmarkedly low.

In short, students resist communication because they see it as lacking intellectualand engineering value. Further, when the notion that they already know how tocommunicate is challenged, they resist by not showing up, and ignoring feedback.

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Embodied hierarchies: resisting the feminineMost troubling from a gendered standpoint, engineering students found it appropriateto use course evaluations to comment on their communication teachers’ bodies. Whilelimited in number, we find these comments are disturbing. As noted earlier, the female(or feminized) teacher’s body becomes most salient when she is teaching in a masculinefield (Basow, 1995; Butler, 2004). It’s natural for people to remark about salient stimuli.However, these student comments go beyond noting difference. When asked questionsabout the effectiveness of instruction a student responded: “Tiffany was hot. Bethanywas mean and ugly and that’s probably why she isn’t married.” These statements gobeyond a critique of the content or integrated nature of communication instruction andinstead they showcase an aggression and objectification of the female teacher’s body.This student sexualizes the E-COMM instructors by making the public a space forprivate critique (Acker, 1990). We can assume that the student was not concerned aboutthe women’s marital status as much as he was sending the message that the E-COMMinstructors did not have a legitimate standing in his professional world. The omissionof the women as professionals might point to a larger issue where students lash outagainst what they view as an inappropriate authority figure, providing inappropriateinstruction, in the wrong classroom.

In line with Atkinson’s (2008) critique against the idea that female bodies, andparticularly their clothing, distract male students, one engineering student said,“Andrea’s tight pants impacted my learning.” This comment can be read as anaccusation against the female teacher for creating a distraction in the classroom due toher choice in clothing. The statement also invokes the teacher’s sexuality and makesclear that her body was being objectified. Whereas:

[y] Features of male teachers’ bodies and sexual presence tend to be either assumed asnormal or can contribute to charisma and presence [y] in contrast, women teachers find theirphysical selves fore grounded in teaching: size or shape, for example can become an elementwhich undermines, rather than reinforces authority (Sinclair, 1997, p. 326).

Female bodies and feminized male bodies stand out as “other” in a masculine culture,for female instructors were not the only ones subject to the engineering students’ gaze.

We draw the example below from a course outside of our formal data set to illustratethat female bodies are not the only ones that might experience disciplining in theclassroom. Male bodies can be viewed as problematic as well, particularly if they donot fit into an engineering identity. One male instructor who wore earrings was alsocommodified. Students had this to say: “Lose the earring. Not cool at all. I lost allrespect.” “Not having an earring would look more professional and I would have beenmore inclined to listen.” As such, this points to two compelling notions. Male bodiesin engineering may be expected to conform to particular masculine subjectivities,thus making a male body with earrings suspect. In addition, male bodies appear tobe feminized when teaching the soft skill of communication, demonstrating that thecontent supersedes the body providing it.

DiscussionThe purpose of this research was to explore the gendered tensions behind engineeringstudents’ resistance to communication instruction and instructors. Our results showthat interdisciplinary collaboration can create tensions that are not simply related totasks or instruction. Instead, our analysis suggests that students draw from broadercultural discourses to understand their discipline and profession in relation to others.

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Students often constructed hierarchical relationships where communication wasconsidered inferior to engineering instead of integral to the discipline and profession.Of importance, students’ understandings of the differences between disciplines heldgendered tensions.

We found that students resisted communication instructors and instruction,particularly because they were embedded into the engineering classroom. Studentscommunicated resistance by expressing a lack of utility of information, devaluingfeedback and instruction, degrading communication and communication teachers, andquestioning the body. For instance, communication instruction is viewed as “fluff ” thateveryone knows. In addition, students devalue communication instructors becausethey are not engineers. Further, students’ comments suggest they view engineeringand communication hierarchically, and that engineering is viewed as “harder” thancommunication.

Beyond how students resist, our analysis uncovers the gendered dynamics that canunderscore interdisciplinary cultures. Looking at such cultures as gendered spacesallows us to see how resistance might be an outcome of gendered tensions andanxieties. Our analysis shows that students construct hierarchical relationshipsbetween the disciplines of engineering and communication by invoking ideologies of“hard” vs “soft.” Thus, we suggest that engineering students resist communicationinstruction and instructors, in part because the integration of a “soft” skill and/or“soft” body into this “hard” science threatens the masculine identity of the disciplineand perhaps, the bodies within it.

In order to understand student resistance to integrated and innovative instruction,we must begin to explore disciplines as gendered by paying attention to the ways thatgender structures interdisciplinary collaboration. We must also be aware of how themicro practices employed by interdisciplinary instructors work to maintain orchallenge gendered tensions. Exploring how gendered discourses shape disciplinarycultures and how individuals are socialized within these cultures is important becauseit offers us a place to act. Several stakeholders are implicated in this cause such asengineering students, faculty, interdisciplinary instructors, and the broader professionof engineering.

To this end, we envision several ways in which scholars can challenge this genderedculture. Broadly, scholars can seek to change the language and practices that excludecertain bodies from disciplines so students are socialized into a culture that supportsgreater diversity. One way to do this is to reframe gendered discourses surroundingacademic disciplines.

As communication scholars we understand that language shapes social reality andindividuals’ subjective feelings and behaviors (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Thispaper explored the metaphors of hard and soft as one specific discourse that gendersinterdisciplinary collaboration between communication and engineering. It is unlikelythat most individuals use these terms to invoke gender or hierarchy. That said, thesemetaphors are discursive fields already in place and inscribed with gendereddistinctions meant to legitimate and guide action, in this case resistance (Lakoff andJohnson, 1980; Weedon, 1997). In the broader context of language and meaning, “hard”and “soft” convey which disciplines have scientific and educational value and genderdifference. When communication is repeatedly noted as “soft,” easy, or somethingeveryone can do, as was often the case in this study, it loses it scholarly virility. Theseterms have direct and material consequences, such as when the engineering students inour study resisted communication.

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As a result, we can and should engage our students in a discussion of these terms.We must point out some of the broader implications, as we have done in this paper, thatthese gendered terms produce hierarchical ordering of disciplines. We can alsoencourage members of academic communities to use different terms to distinguishdisciplines. We have noted that these terms invoke embodied and material identities.One reason the female body might stand out in an engineering classroom is becausethere are so few. In addition, there are fewer female engineering role models. Culturalimages of what an engineer “looks like” in the USA have presented as a ratherhomogenous (white and male) group. Instructors can work to revise the image andexpand embodied options of the engineer by selecting images of women engineers orby using the pronoun “she” as well as “he” in examples and cases. To expand diversitymore fully, representations should also seek expansive images of race, class, sexuality,and embodied ability levels.

On a more local and practice-based level, we can turn a reflexive lens oninterdisciplinary collaboration itself. We must do more than integrate discipline-specific communication instruction; rather, we must question the foundations of thedisciplinary norms characterizing the cultures with whom we collaborate (Sullivan andKedrowicz, 2011). Without this critical process, we run the risk of accepting andadvancing (potentially) hegemonic practices. Instead, interdisciplinary scholars andpractitioners must attend to issues of diversity and social justice. A crucial first step iscontinuing to explore how students and instructors view various fields such asengineering, pharmacy and management, for example. Scholars can ask questionssuch as, what, if any, hierarchical relationships exist to order fields of study? How dostudents react and respond to interdisciplinary instruction?

We also suggest that instructors be reflexive about the interdisciplinary frameworkalready in place and to utilize them to enhance diversity. For instance, scholars mightexamine how prevailing disciplinary and professional norms reinforce hierarchies andhow they can be drawn upon to seek change. We can take cues from specific professionsseeking greater diversity to develop integrated instruction that supports these aims.

For instance, engineering is working to remedy the under representation of womenand emphasize the importance of communication skills. These changes necessitate acultural shift that involves ideologies, language, practices, and norms. The desired endresult is a profession that is more open to diversity and one that embracescommunication as a “real” part of engineering rather than a periphery, “feminine” skill.The engineering profession is thus shaping what we would call the “new engineer,”a professional who is equally competent in both engineering knowledge andcommunication abilities. Since part of the work of integrated communicationinstruction is socializing students into their professions, communication instructorsmust help socialize engineering students into the identity of “the new engineer”through drawing from discipline-specific calls for inclusion and diversity and weavingthese calls into writing, speaking, and teamwork assignments.

In conclusion, the engineering and communication disciplines are cultures shaped bygendered discourses. But, cultures are not static. The masculine culture of engineeringand feminized culture of communication and the macro-level discourses that characterizethem are amenable to change. The interdisciplinary classroom represents one spacewhere gendered discourses and practices can be challenged. Through this merging ofcultures, creative changes and pedagogical breakthroughs are possible, but only ifscholars understand students’ perceptions about communication and resistance toinstruction and instructors.

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Corresponding authorKatie R. Sullivan can be contacted at: kate.sullivan.rose@gmail.com

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