Genre Analysis

By Jomara Rosell

For this report, I analyzed three articles from the Journal of Engineering Education

– University of Arizona. These journals focus on the analysis of the expectations, values,

achievements and career plans of engineering students. In the first two articles, the authors

perform an analysis and identify various factors based on the options of undergraduate

students to enroll and persist in engineering careers. In addition, in the third article the

authors examine the persistence within the engineering specialty and the participation of

university students in engineering with other specialties. The articles I analyzed were:

1. Brettd, J., Mariec, P., Serge, H. (2010). An Analysis of Motivation Constructs

with First-Year Engineering Students: Relationships Among Expectancies,

Values, Achievement, and Career Plan. Journal of Engineering Education –

University of Arizona. Pg. 289-294

2. Holly, M., Ruth, S., Ronald, M. (2010). Why Do Students Choose Engineering?

A Qualitative, Longitudinal Investigation of Students’ Motivational Values.

Journal of Engineering Education – University of Arizona. Pg. 319-322.

3. Gary. L, Alexander, C., McCormick, S. (2010). Comparing the Undergraduate

Experience of Engineers to All Other Majors: Significant Differences are

Programmatic. Journal of Engineering Education – University of Arizona. Pg.

305-310.

Within my data analysis, I considered the following aspects of the three articles:

organization, purpose, and source use.

Organization:

The articles provided the Literature Review on the first part of the article. This
section was called “Introduction” by Holly, Ruth and Ronald (2010), “Background:

Relevant motivation and theories” by Brettd, Mariec and Serge (2010) and “Literature

Review” by Gary, Alexander and McCormick (2010). The first article was organized by

“prior research on related topics”. Breddt et al. (2010) discuss about “The market demand

for engineers”. The authors focused on the analysis of cases in which included the

participant of 363 first-year engineering students at a large state university. In that

analysis those students had to complete an online survey instrument in the first and second

semester of their first year. The second article was organized by “Chronological”. Gary

et al. (2010) deal about “Identify over the year the candidates with the ability and

motivation to practice engineering, and in this way improve educational policies so that

these students obtain their professional degree”. The authors compared using surveys to

determine whether differences emerged in three dimensions of student engagement based

on students' self-reported major. On the other hand, this section was organized by main

theoretical concepts. For example, Holly et al. (2010) support their ideas framed in

“motivation theory”. The authors focused on the analysis of various cases that have been

previously conducted on the perception in which included the participant of eleven

students (five men and six women) at a U.S. technical school.

Purpose:

The purpose of the literature review for each of the articles seems to be to provide

readers with enough background to understand the topic of the study and why it is

important to conduct the research. For example, Holly et al. (2010) use specific

concept to supports their investigation using motivation theory to understand how most

students choose to study engineering. To do this, they were based on the question: “How

do valuable beliefs related to engineering students contribute to their choices to

participate and persist in obtaining engineering degrees?” in order to demonstrate that

different patterns exist in the types of value that participants assigned to earning an

engineering degree. Similarly, Breddt et al. (2010) based on the concept of “motivation”

examined the relationships among the following motivation constructs for female and

male first-year engineering students in order to contribute to the growing body of

literature on persistence in engineering by using motivation theories from the fields of

education and psychology as a framework. On the other hand, Gary et al. (2010) explored

three research questions: “How do engineering students rate their college engagement

compared to students in other majors?”, “How do engineering persisters, non-persisters,

and migrators compare in terms of collegiate engagement, time on task, and enriching

educational experiences?” and “What college engagement factors predict persistence in

engineering?” in order to identify the reasons why over the years students of other

specialties decide to migrate to the engineering specialty.

Source Use:

All the literature reviews primarily used secondary sources in the literature review,

instead of than relying on the writers’ background as a source. The three articles that I

analyzed use both types of citations. For example, in some paragraphs, Holly et al. (2010)

uses integral citations. “Although Ohland et al. (2008) recently found that persistence

rates of engineering students are not that different than those for students in other majors,

their findings continue to highlight the gender gap in engineering majors.” And in other

paragraphs, it uses non-integral citations “Researchers suggest that pedagogical and

programmatic changes are necessary to influence current and perspective students’

choices to be engineers (e.g., NAE, 2008; Sheppard et al., 2009).” The same applies to

the other articles.

On the other hand, in the three articles, sentences are used in simple present tense. also,

most of these sentences are linked with contrast connectors. For example, Holly et al.
(2010): “Significant findings include descriptions and characteristics of persisters and

non-persisters (e.g., French, Immekus, and Oakes, 2005; Mendez et al., 2008; Nicholls et

al., 2007). However, what is lacking in current research findings is a general

understanding about how and why students choose to enter and persist in earning

engineering degrees.” (p.289). Similarly, in some parts of the text comparative and

addition connectors are used to give greater emphasis to the citations used and, in this

way, a better understanding of the subject is achieved. For example, Breddt et al. (2010):

“Increasing the number of engineering graduates is challenging because the factors

associated with persistence are complex and not well understood (Eris et al., 2007;

Lichtenstein et al., 2007). Further complicating the issue, retention within an engineering

curriculum does not necessarily guarantee persistence into an engineering career

(Lichtenstein et al., 2009).” (p. 319)

Discussion:

The three articles showed great similarity in terms of proposal and use of the

source. In the three cases, the authors use integral citations and non-integral citations. In

addition, the three articles exclusively used synthesis than summary. However, there was

variation in the rhetorical organization of these articles. In the case of Holly et al. (2010),

the authors focused on a specific theoretical concept “motivation” to support their ideas

and demonstrate that there are different patterns in the types of value or personal

importance that participants assign to obtain an engineering degree.

The literature review was rather streamlined, easy to understand. This may reflect the fact

that the articles are written for students who are studying engineering degree or for those

who wish to opt for it. In addition, the reference to individual articles might help readers

to understand key studies in the field rather than getting bogged down with a greater

number of studies.