Please join us for a job talk by Dr. Anthony Johnson, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University, MA. Talk title and abstract are below. No RSVP Required.
Title: Engineering Advantage: Collaborative Learning, the Grading Curve, and the Reproduction of Inequality
Abstract: While colleges and universities—especially science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments—have endorsed peer collaborative learning in response to increasing scholarly and public concern about college students’ decreased and limited learning, there is very little research on students’ collaborative experiences in college and their unintended consequences for inequality.
Drawing on an ethnographic case study of an engineering school at an elite university and focusing specifically on the school’s use of the logic of the grading curve—a key organizational feature—this talk examines how the culture and structure of the engineering school undermine the equitable promises of collaborative learning by rewarding the collaborative experiences of already privileged students while disadvantaging those of less privileged students. The findings have implications for our scholarly understanding of how inequalities are reproduced in education, as well as for higher education practice aimed at engineering equity in educational opportunity.
