2022-12-09 Virginia Grande

Friday 9 December 9.00 - 10.00 in this Zoom room 
(PhD students stay on an extra hour, by separate invitation)

Role Modeling in Computing and Engineering Education: A Framework to Support Reflection

All educators are potential role models for their students. This is so regardless of the length of our teaching experience (yes, teaching assistants are included!), whether we are aware of what we are role modeling and whether we intend for this to be imitated.

The main outcome of Virginia Grande’s PhD thesis is a framework that supports reflections on role modeling from these perspectives of awareness and intention, what one can model and the main actors in this phenomenon. In this seminar we will discuss the complexity of role modeling in engineering education, what our role in this is, and how we as educators can apply the result of these reflections to our own disciplines and contexts, discuss with colleagues, and guide our students in similar reflections.  

Virginia Grande (they/them), is a PhD candidate at UpCERG (the Uppsala Computing Education Research Group) with a background in computer engineering. Their work is inspired by their teaching experience and years of volunteering for the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and, in particular, the ACM-W (the ACM Council on Women in Computing). See also: ITiCSE Working Groups: https://iticse.acm.org/2022/working-groups/  Virginia's profile at Uppsala University

Two papers that you may want to read before the seminar:

Virginia Grande. 2018. Lost for Words! Defining the Language Around Role Models in Engineering Education. In 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (FIE 2018). San Jose, USA. pdf

Virginia Grande, Anne-Kathrin Peters, Mats Daniels, and Matti Tedre. 2018. “Participating Under the Influence”: How Role Models Affect the Computing Discipline, Profession, and Student Population. In 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (FIE 2018). San Jose, USA. pdf

Materials from the seminar

Presentation

Secules, S, McCall, C, Mejia, JA, et al. Positionality practices and dimensions of impact on equity research: A collaborative inquiry and call to the community. Journal of Engineering Education. 2021; 110: 19– 43. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20377

Post-seminar message:

Dear all, 
Thank you so much for being at the seminar today. You really made me reflect and see my research and the work of others from different angles, which I always appreciate. I’m thankful for your attention and your interest, and more than happy to discuss with you should you like to try this kind of reflection on role modeling in your contexts.
More personally, thank you for welcoming in what felt like such a safe space. I felt very comfortable with you. It felt perfectly fine to be vulnerable, which I find so uncommon (and so needed!) in academia. You transmit this support for each other, and I particularly like that PhD students voices are part of this and very much encouraged to participate as the same level as more senior staff.
Great role modeling as a group :)
With my thanks and wishing you a very nice weekend,
Virginia