The early career years of engineering: Crossing the threshold between education and practice
The early career years of engineering: Crossing the threshold between education and practice
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工程职业生涯的早期：跨越教育和实践之间的门槛
DOI：
10.1080/19378629.2021.1961570
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发表时间：
2021
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
Coso Strong, Alexandra.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Brunhaver, Samantha R.;Jesiek, Brent K.;Korte, Russell F.;Coso Strong, Alexandra.
在工程实践研究中，职业生涯的早期阶段是一个特别耐人寻味的研究领域。这通常被认为是或多或少有能力的毕业生进入劳动力大军并开始成功职业生涯的时候，通常是在大型企业组织中，并得到各种入职计划的支持。然而，这种理想化的表现掩盖了一个复杂得多的现实，在这个现实中，许多工程学毕业生在工程学的边缘(或外部)追求职业生涯，承受复杂的组织社会化和身份发展压力，并努力应对意想不到的能力要求。在学校和工作中，早期职业工程师可能还会遇到要求他们更具创业精神/内部创业精神、多学科、创新、文化能力和/或社会意识的呼声--但没有认识到其中一些属性可能与某些行业或工作角色冲突或不太匹配。此外，技术、市场、组织结构和人口结构的快速变化--仅举几例--继续重塑和改变着整个职业生涯阶段的工程工作。在这种复杂和不断变化的背景下，调查早期工程师实际生活经历的研究有助于探索工程教育和实践之间的关系，包括让工程专业的学生为进入劳动力大军的现实做好准备。早在20世纪80年代，研究工程师职业生涯的这一重要部分就出现在文献中，Sara Rynes 1在她对职业生涯早期工程师过渡到经理职位的研究中指出，很奇怪，很少有研究考察早期职业生涯阶段的工程师。从那时起，越来越多的研究人员发表了关于职业生涯早期工程实践的研究；然而，由于空间的复杂性、工程专业学生不断变化的人口统计以及工程实践的动态性质，此类研究的范围在某种程度上仍然有限。例如，纳迪亚·福阿德和他的同事发现，女性工程师在职业生涯早期缺乏对坚持不懈的研究，而里德·史蒂文斯、阿迪亚·乔里和凯文·奥康纳3发现，有必要进行研究，直接研究工程师从学校过渡到工作的具体学习过程。即使在工程学研究中，有大量的工作涉及工程组建和工程工作，除了少数例外情况外，文章也没有特别侧重于毕业后工程组建的延续或工程工作对组织新人的影响。4.
In studies of engineering practice, the early career phase is a particularly intriguing area of inquiry. It is frequently imagined as the time when more-or-less competent graduates enter the workforce and launch successful careers, often in large corporate organizations and supported by various types of onboarding programs. Yet this kind of idealized representation belies a much more complex reality, one in which many engineering graduates pursue careers on the edges (or outside) of engineering, navigate complex organizational socialization and identity development pressures, and grapple with unexpected competency demands. In school and at work, early-career engineers might additionally encounter calls to be more entre/intrapreneurial, multidisciplinary, innovative, culturally competent, and/or socially conscious–but without acknowledging that some of these attributes may conflict or poorly align with certain industries or job roles. Further, rapid changes in technology, markets, organizational structures, and demographics–to name just a few–continue to reshape and transform engineering work across all career stages. Against this complex and ever-changing backdrop, research investigating the actual lived experiences of early-career engineers helps explore the relationships between engineering education and practice, including preparation of engineering students for the realities of entering the workforce.Calls for study of this important segment of engineers’ careers have appeared in the literature as early as the 1980s, with Sara Rynes 1 noting, in her study of early-career engineers transitioning to manager positions, how it was “curious that so little research has examined engineers at earlier career stages.” Since then, an increasing number of researchers have published studies on early career engineering practice; however, such research has remained somewhat limited in scope due to the complexities of the space, the changing demographics of engineering students, and the dynamic nature of engineering practice. For example, Nadya Fouad and colleagues 2 identified a lack of focus on the early-career years in research on women engineers’ persistence, while Reed Stevens, Aditya Johri, and Kevin O’Connor 3 observed a need for research that “examines directly the specific learning processes of engineers making the transition from school to work.” Even within Engineering Studies, where a substantial body of work has attended to engineering formation and engineering work, articles have not particularly focused on the continuation of engineering formation after graduation or the influence of engineering work on organizational newcomers, save for a few exceptions. 4