Discourses and Social Worlds in Engineering Education: Preparing Problem-solvers for Engineering Practice
Discourses and Social Worlds in Engineering Education: Preparing Problem-solvers for Engineering Practice
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工程教育中的话语和社会世界：为工程实践培养问题解决者
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发表时间：
2012
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通讯作者：
Nathan McNeill
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作者：
E. Douglas;Mirka Koro;David J. Therriault;Christine Lee;Nathan McNeill
社会和语言表征系统（也称为话语）塑造了个人如何看待他们的社会世界，包括他们自己的身份。在工程背景下，话语塑造了学生如何看待自己作为工程师的角色，并提供了一个了解社会力量塑造学生新兴职业生活的窗口。在本文中。我们通过检查学生如何解决问题来调查工程教育中存在的话语。我们重点关注对东南部一所大型大学八名材料科学与工程专业学生的采访数据。参与者在自言自语会议中解决了四个工程问题，然后接受了有关他们解决问题的方法的采访。使用吉氏话语分析方法的修改版来分析访谈数据。首先，我们分析了学生的动机并确定了他们最重要的三个我的陈述。接下来，我们根据访谈中发现的主要主题和陈述来确定每个参与者的身份和相关特征。最后，确定了影响每个参与者访谈中出现的身份的话语，以便与社会和政治格局中更广泛的影响建立联系。从这个分析过程中，确定了六种话语：教学、经济、个人主义、同伴合作、数学和研究。教学话语在学生访谈中最常见（不包括与解决问题直接相关的话语）。许多话语强调了与学生相关的实践、期望和语言使用。我们对这些发现的解释表明，这些学生认为自己主要是学生（即与教授和同学一起探索其学术专业领域），而不是新兴工程师（其实践受到行业条件的影响）。我们的结果表明，在学术环境中解决问题并不能鼓励学生考虑与行业相关的替代性话语，并且可能无法促进与课堂之外的社会世界的联系。
Social and linguistic representational systems, also known as Discourses, shape how individuals perceive their social worlds, including their own identities. Within an engineering context, Discourses shape how students perceive their roles as engineers and provide a window into which social forces shape students’ emerging professional lives. In this paper. we investigate Discourses present in engineering education by examining how students approach problem solving. We focus on data from interviews with eight senior materials science and engineering students at a large southeastern university. Participants solved four engineering problems in a think aloud session and then were interviewed afterward about their problem solving approaches. A modification of Gee’s Discourse analysis method was used to analyze the interview data. First, we analyzed students’ motifs and identified their top three I-statements. Next, we developed each participant’s identities and associated characteristics based on the dominant motifs and Istatements found in the interviews. Finally, Discourses that influenced the identities that emerged from each participant’s interview were identified in order to draw connections to wider influences in the social and political landscape. From this analysis process, six Discourses were identified: pedagogical, economic, individualistic, peer collaboration, math, and research. Pedagogical Discourses were the most frequent in students’ interviews (excluding discourses directly related to solving the problems). Many of the Discourses highlighted the practices, expectations, and language uses associated with being a student. We interpreted these findings to indicate that these students perceived themselves mainly as students (i.e., navigating the realm of their academic majors with professors and classmates), rather than as emerging engineers (whose practices are affected by conditions of industry). Our results suggest that problem solving in an academic setting does not encourage students to consider alternative Discourses related to industry and may fail to promote connections to social worlds beyond the classroom.