2022-12-09 Virginia Grande

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.  

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

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).

ITiCSE Working Groups: https://iticse.acm.org/2022/working-groups/ 

Virginia's profile at Uppsala University