Students need access to the disciplinary practices of engineering, but at the same time, these practices need to transform to the realities of the changing global environment and the profession. The site of this research is an engineering foundation programme for less advantaged students in South Africa and is thus perhaps well-positioned to look afresh at some mainstream disciplinary practices. Rather than students conforming to a narrow sense of appropriate behaviour, a dialogue needs to be set up between what students bring and what the institution expects, in order to evolve innovative spaces within the curriculum. This paper explores what these spaces can offer and looks at how students negotiate complex identity positions in their writing, specifically in terms of agency and affect. It emphasizes that both educators and engineers need to learn to draw on own knowledges and experiences rather than imposing knowledge in a top-down process.