Work in progress: Exploring 'ways of thinking' of interdisciplinary collaborators

Calls have been made for novel ways of thinking about engineering education research. Building on an earlier qualitative inquiry, this work in progress study examined the number and nature of factors underlying the constructs of futures, values, systems, and strategic thinking within the context of interdisciplinary engineering education research. Exploratory factor analysis of survey data (n =111) supported a correlated two factor structure for futures and strategic thinking, one factor for systems thinking, and a two to three factor structure for values thinking. The study has implications for researchers to better understand the multidimensional, correlated nature of various ways of thinking.