Undergraduate engineering students’ epistemic cognition and changes in the course of being engineering design mentors

Abstract Background To become qualified engineers, undergraduates must develop a contextualized epistemic cognition (EC) during the engineering design process (EDP), but little is known about their EC in the authentic EDP. This study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of the EC and reported epistemic changes of undergraduate engineering students who served as EDP mentors in a secondary-school STEM-based community service-learning (CSL) project in Hong Kong. Harnessing the epistemic analytical model of Aims, Ideals, and Reliable Processes (AIR), this study qualitatively analyzed interviews with 11 undergraduate engineering students about the EDP during their mentorship experiences. Results Based on the empirical data, we refined the AIR model to AIRK by adding a new component, “K” (Knowledge resources), to better interpret undergraduate engineering students’ EC during the EDP. Furthermore, by analyzing undergraduate engineering students’ reflections on their epistemic changes through mentorship, we identified six aspects: (i) from learning theoretical knowledge to transforming knowledge to address societal needs; (ii) from an assignment-focused to a user-centered mindset; (iii) from recognizing the optimal solution to embracing the necessity for continuous improvement; (iv) from completing code to thinking creatively; (v) from a technology-centric mindset to valuing communication and collaboration; and (vi) gaining more interconnected STEM knowledge. Conclusions Our resulting AIRK model could provide a conceptual tool for understanding undergraduate engineering students’ EC in the EDP. The findings on reported epistemic changes demonstrated that mentoring secondary students in STEM projects could foster undergraduate engineering students’ EC development, revealing that the approach of university–school–community partnership can be practically sustainable and beneficial for adoption.