Reflective Journal Entry: Engineering Workplace Incident Analysis

This journal entry reflects on a critical incident during an engineering field visit, where students displayed discriminatory behavior towards a senior manager based on his ethnicity. The student intervened, promoting cultural competence and the importance of diversity and inclusion within the team. The entry explores the impact of prejudice on team dynamics and productivity, emphasizing the value of cross-cultural communication and collaboration. The student uses Ullmann's (2017) levels of reflection to analyze the incident, highlighting the significance of creating a culturally diverse and inclusive environment in engineering workplaces. The student successfully completed the assignment by sharing notes with the team. This reflective journal entry underscores the need for aspiring engineers to develop cultural competence to effectively work in diverse teams, fostering efficient communication and enhancing overall team performance.

Journal: 3
Safety, diversity and inclusivity in engineering workplaces in the student’s field of practice:
In this context, I would like to narrate an incident during one of the engineering field visits to a
factory where the senior manager in-charge of the field-training was an ‘Afro-American’. On
account of the ethnic background, many of the students put up a discriminatory attitude towards
him. This reflected in the manner in which they ignored the instructions of the manager and
discussed among themselves about the skin color of the manager. This was extremely
disrespectful. As a result, I decided to intervene and formed a group with those students while we
needed to submit a report on the industry visit after the completion of the visit. Since, those
students had been distracted in judging and discriminating the senior manager on his external
looks. They had missed out on documenting important information, which I had recorded
throughout the visit.
On one of the team meetings, when I asked them about their input they confessed they had not
taken down any notes. It was at this moment, I explained them about ‘cultural competence’ and
the demerits of exhibiting a discriminatory behavior. I shared my notes with them so that as a
team we could successfully complete our assignment and at the same time also explained them
about cultural diversity, cultural competence and inclusion.
On applying the deeper thinking level as prescribed by Ullman (2017), this incident helped me
understand as to why the fostering of a culturally diverse environment is important. Also, for
engineering workshops and work places, it is extremely important that the aspiring engineers
mould themselves into culturally competent individuals such that they are able to effectively gel
with candidates belonging to other cultural communities. One of the greatest assets of today’s

world is cultural diversity and efficient cross-cultural communication. Also, inclusiveness and
collaborative effort within a team helps to bring out the best from every team which enhances
overall team productivity and improves the team dynamics. A prejudiced or a biased work
environment critically diminishes the ability of the man power working for an organization to
exhibit the best outcomes.

References:
Ullmann, T. D. (2017, March). Reflective writing analytics: empirically determined keywords of
written reflection. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Learning Analytics & Knowledge
Conference (pp. 163-167).