How to support African women’s learning in engineering labs

Engineering laboratories are interesting spaces for understanding the experiences and persistence of African women in engineering.

Compared to other institutional spaces, labs are sites where students can build their confidence as doers of engineering because they allow for skill development and content exploration. Moreover, the engineering laboratory is a fundamental learning site because engineering is an applied discipline.

In this retrospective essay, I argue that African women benefit from extensive lab experience, and that the notion of ‘serendipity’ contributes to the coherent learning that occurs in labs.

This has led me to pursue, over the course of several projects, the following conceptual research question: How can engineering laboratories be pedagogically utilised to best foster coherent learning for women? While I am not proposing to answer this question empirically here, I am setting forth arguments based on past empirical research.

Coherent learning

I define coherent learning as a curricular approach that facilitates real-world applications and the learning of material long-term. Serendipity, meanwhile, refers to the curricular content and critical thinking that students engage with on their path to arriving at a desired outcome.

For example, if an environmental engineering student is working in a lab on a wastewater treatment experiment the serendipity – she may engage with critical thinking while working – could be related to thermochemical reactions that are related to (but not exactly aligned with) the specified laboratory project.

Serendipity is the base or prerequisite curricular knowledge that may not be pertinent to a student’s desired outcome but is, nevertheless, pertinent to overall learning.

Fostering coherent learning in engineering laboratories requires students to think deeply, be proactive and recover with resilience when success is not immediate.

Furthermore, I posit that this can be accomplished while being cognisant of gender disparities in higher education settings. To answer my overarching question, I use a comparative approach with data from three separate empirical studies conducted in Ethiopia and Kenya.

Studies in Ethiopia and Kenya

Many structural and interpersonal challenges often encumber laboratory learning for women in Eastern African institutions.

In my previous work in Ethiopia, I found that female engineering majors at Addis Ababa University, Bahir Dar University and Hawassa University were often dissatisfied with the lack of practical learning opportunities in laboratory classrooms.

I found that interviewees were not satisfied with mastering content knowledge on paper; participants wanted to apply theories to tactile exercises in laboratory and field.

Interviewees expressed frustration regarding the clear divide between the theoretical knowledge they learned and the practical experience they needed.

Along with this critique of theory-heavy learning, participants often lamented the inadequate laboratory facilities and described them as crowded and full of outdated equipment.

For example, one Ethiopian woman said: “So, what the problem was, engineering: it’s a very practical subject. So when – suddenly, when you’re, I don’t know, learning about mechanics and dynamics and stuff, it’s – you may have the basics theoretically, but if you don’t see it, what does that mean?

“When people talk about drawing – joints and structurally speaking and stuff like that – what does it really mean?”

This is particularly problematic, because laboratories provide opportunities for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) learners to apply the theoretical concepts they are learning.

Pedagogically constructive learning

In Kenya, I conducted a mixed methods design study, involving 20 interviewees and 50 survey respondents at the University of Nairobi. I found that wrestling with lab concepts and equipment in class allowed the women in this study to develop their technical expertise and gain confidence.

Often, this happened as women made sense of their laboratory assignments over time, by trial and error.

To this end, one Kenyan student shared her experience: “Laboratory courses, I would say … not a very good job is done, because it has become like a routine. You are given a lab report, some would not take pains in explaining exactly what you’re doing because some equipment is new or what is in the diagram – the symbols in the diagram – don’t make sense for you when you look at the circuit box.

“And so, you are just given a manual and you’re supposed to figure out what is happening. And only when we get to the end of the lab, do we realise that the lab was actually easy, but it would have been better to have someone explain, maybe, what the lab is about.”

However, the opportunities for such learning were constrained by limited instructor availability, outdated equipment and gendered discrimination from male classmates.

Thus, in both the Ethiopian and Kenyan cases, East African women often find themselves with limited opportunities for laboratory learning in a broader education setting that is hostile.

Nevertheless, the opportunities they had to experiment with their laboratory assignments and explore contextual content (serendipity), even when they appeared to be failing, were pedagogically constructive.

Implications for lab instructors

Overall, my research documents a major gap in educational practice (namely, the absence of interconnected or coherent, and useful or practical pedagogical elements) by showing how higher education instructors can take advantage of serendipity during laboratory settings.

Laboratory structures should encourage such ‘out-of-the-box thinking’ by recognising it and rewarding it. In this conceptual essay, I have based my argument on women in Eastern African public institutions.

By embracing serendipity, instructors should couple a ‘safe to fail’ approach with formative feedback to ensure that failure is marshalled into productive learning rather than a grade point average or GPA-sinking experience that results in students leaving the discipline.

While all of the described pedagogical practices can (and should) benefit male students, nurturing this in lab settings is especially beneficial for women.

This is because laboratory settings are uniquely gendered in ways that exclude women. For example, insights published by the World Economic Forum show that, in many Sub-Saharan African countries, women make up fewer than 30% of students enrolled in tertiary engineering programmes.

The structural conditions (such as sexual harassment and stereotypes) that have made STEM so lopsided in terms of gender show us that higher education needs to have a gender-conscious response.

In other words, the priority of these practices should be to include women – who are often at the intersection of multiple marginalities. In doing so, the learning environment becomes more inclusive for all students.

Institutional policymakers within higher education contexts, such as upper-level administration, should consider this in the evaluation of laboratory instructors and settings.

Dr Meseret F Hailu is an assistant professor of higher and postsecondary education at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, United States. Currently, she explores two lines of research concerning the experiences of undergraduate black women in different settings: East Africa and the United States. Her research investigates how articulations of identity shape educational retention and reflect institutional culture. Her research has been funded by the National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Foundation, Fulbright Program, National Science Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development.