Wint, Natalie;
Direito, Inês;
(2026)
How do engineering students understand and conceptualize individual resilience?
Journal of Engineering Education
, 115
(1)
, Article e70047. 10.1002/jee.70047.
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Abstract
Background: There is increasing focus on developing resilient engineering students, this being linked to the perceived difficulty of degrees and the rate of technological change. Simultaneously, there continue to be issues with diversity and retention, and concerns regarding student mental health, both of which have been linked to resilience. Despite this, beliefs that engineering students hold about resilience and what it means to be resilient remain largely unexamined. / Purpose/Hypothesis: We explore the role of underlying structures and contextual factors in shaping engineering students' perceptions and experience of resilience within engineering education and practice. / Design/Method: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 engineering students in a UK-based institution. Transcripts were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA). / Results: Students recognized resilience as important within engineering education and practice, but highlighted the detrimental impact that a focus on resilience can have on mental health. Whether resilience was necessary, as well as what constituted a resilient response, appeared to vary depending on the situation and required some level of judgment. Students appeared to believe that the university environment provided the adversity required to develop resilience but played a less significant role in providing the support necessary for positive adaptation. / Conclusions: This work acts to surface implications of situating resilience as a desirable student or graduate attribute without consideration for wider structural inequalities. Failing to expose assumptions regarding the situations which require a resilient response risks further perpetuating the very issues around diversity, retention, and progression, which the development of resilience has been proposed to overcome.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | How do engineering students understand and conceptualize individual resilience? |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1002/jee.70047 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.70047 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Journal of Engineering Education published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Engineering Education. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Graduate attributes, mental health, professional skills, reflexive thematic analysis, resilience, student development, student experience |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > STEaPP |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10217715 |
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