Collaborative Research: GSE/RES The Effect of Climate and Pedagogy on Persistence: A Longitudinal Study of Women in Undergraduate Engineering Programs

智力优势：研究人员正在进行一项纵向、多机构和多变量的研究，以确定气候和教学方法如何影响女性在本科工程专业的持久性。从1987年到2004年，9所院校向女性授予1/12的工程学学士学位，这些院校的机构数据将回答这个研究问题，“女性工程学学生的持久力如何因种族、工程专业、所在年龄段和院校而异，具体而言，可以确定哪些成功的领域？”17年的研究期使人们有可能将持久性定义为六年的工程学毕业率，这一点将结果与国家持久性数据联系起来。这项研究以气候和教育学为镜头，通过研究之前收集的大量数据之间的关系，并建立这些数据的背景，利用多个国家科学基金会项目的成功，来观察本科工程专业女性的持久性。机构政策和领导力中的关键事件的时间表，通过从教职员工和管理人员收集回顾数据的采访丰富，澄清了气候和教学与坚持不懈的关系。对坚持性高的人群中的学生进行的半结构化访谈被用来澄清研究结果。中场数据集包括课程部分，这使得研究工程专业女性临界质量的影响成为可能。更广泛的影响：这项工作建立在以前的定性研究中发展的理论基础上，开发了一个量化结果的支架，可以支持政策制定者的知情决策。创建一个关于气候和教学方法如何影响持久性的纵向视角，将接触到工程机构的多个利益相关者--以大样本的权威以及个别学生更柔和的声音说话。结果将是一个令人信服的故事，而不是一个单一研究结果的报告。研究团队横跨多个工程学科、社会科学和人力资源开发，这是向广泛受众传播的理想选择。团队成员在美国工程教育学会、其教育研究和方法分部、电气和电子工程师学会教育学会中的领导作用，以及与普渡大学、弗吉尼亚理工大学、克莱姆森大学工程教育系和国家工程院S工程教育奖学金促进中心的联系，确保了广泛的传播。

Intellectual merit: The researchers are conducting a longitudinal, multi-institutional, and multivariate study determining how climate and pedagogy affect the persistence of women in undergraduate engineering programs. Institutional data from 1987-2004 at nine institutions granting 1/12 of the engineering bachelor's degrees awarded to women will answer the research question, "How does the persistence of women engineering students vary by race, engineering major, cohort year, and institution, and specifically, what pockets of success can be identified?" The 17-year study period makes it possible to define persistence as the six-year graduation rate in engineering, which anchors the results in the context of national persistence data. The research uses climate and pedagogy as lenses through which to view the persistence of undergraduate engineering women, leveraging the success of multiple National Science Foundation projects by studying the relationships among a significant amount of previously collected data and establishing the context of those data. A timeline of critical incidents in institutional policy and leadership, enriched by interviews gathering retrospective data from faculty and administrators, clarify the relationships of climate and pedagogy to persistence. Semi-structured interviews of students in populations in which persistence is high are used to clarify the findings. The MIDFIELD dataset includes course sections, making it possible to study the effects of critical mass among women in engineering. Broader impact: This work builds on the theoretical foundation developed in previous qualitative studies, developing a scaffold of quantitative results that can support the informed decisions of policymakers. Creating a longitudinal perspective of how climate and pedagogy affect persistence will reach multiple stakeholders at engineering institutions--speaking with the authority of large sample sizes as well as with the softer voice of individual students. The result will be a compelling story rather than a report of the result of a single study. The research team spans multiple engineering disciplines, the social sciences, and human resource development, which is ideal for diffusion to a wide audience. The leadership roles of team members in the American Society of Engineering Education, its Educational Research and Methods division, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Education Society, as well as affiliations with departments of Engineering Education at Purdue, Virginia Tech, and Clemson, and the National Academy of Engineering?s Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education, ensures broad dissemination.