Learning Ethnographies of New Engineers: A New Approach to Understanding the Transition from School to Work

这项合作研究旨在对新工程师从学校到工作场所的过渡发展一个详细的、有经验的理解，从而确定本科教育和工程专业实践之间的连续性和间断性。这项研究建立在NSF资助的两名研究人员的研究基础上，他们跟踪调查了工科学生的本科工程经历；该项目代表着朝着改善工程教育和在STEM工作场所学习等被忽视的领域进一步推进学习科学研究的方向迈出了下一步。在这个项目中学习的工程师将是应届毕业生，担任典型的学生从他们的机构，并在经济上重要的或不断扩大的工程部门的职位。核心方法将是学习民族志，这是一种创新的方法，使用民族志田野工作来发现这些新工程师需要学习什么，他们是如何学习的，他们似乎很容易从以前的教育经验中适应或使用什么，以及这些对他们参与工作和发展工程师身份的后果。学习民族志将为这项研究的两个进一步方面奠定基础：将工作场所实践与这些工程师本科项目的实践进行比较，以及一项调查，将民族志发现推广到更广泛的人群中。将对妇女和代表性不足的少数群体成员进行过度抽样，以提供比较分析的基础，以便了解这些群体成员在进入工作场所时可能面临的独特经历和挑战。在工程方面，学校和工作之间缺乏连贯性经常被注意到，但对不匹配的细节理解不足，无法有效地为实践提供信息；这项研究解决了理解上的差距。对于行业来说，它可以为工作场所做法的重组提供信息，以更好地促进从学校到工作的过渡。对于本科课程，这项研究可以为采用或淡化教育实践提供基础，使工程学院能够更好地培养学生成为富有创造力和成功的工程师。对于学生来说，这项研究可能会导致更相关和更实用的工程知识的发展，并对他们未来可能的职业有更准确的理解。预计这项研究还将为招募和留住任职人数不足的群体成员的努力提供信息。

This collaborative research study seeks to develop a detailed, empirically grounded understanding of new engineers'transitions from schools to workplaces, and thereby to identify continuities and discontinuities between undergraduate education and professional practice in engineering. The study builds upon NSF-funded research by two of the investigators that followed engineering students through their undergraduate engineering experiences; this project represents a next step towards improving engineering education and furthering learning sciences research in neglected areas like STEM workplace learning. The engineers studied in this project will be recent graduates, taking positions typical of students from their institutions, and in economically important or expanding engineering sectors. The central methodology will be learning ethnographies, an innovative approach using ethnographic fieldwork to discover what these new engineers need to learn, how they learn it, what they appear to adapt or use readily from their prior educational experience, and the consequences of these for their workplace participation and developing identities as engineers. The learning ethnographies will ground two further aspects of the study: a comparison of workplace practices with those of these engineers' undergraduate programs, and a survey generalizing ethnographic findings to a broader population. Women and members of underrepresented minority groups will be oversampled to provide a basis for comparative analysis intended to understand distinctive experiences and challenges that members of these groups may face as they move into the workplace. Lack of continuity between school and work in engineering is often noted, but details of mismatches are insufficiently understood to effectively inform practice; this research addresses this gap in understanding. For industry, it can inform reorganization of workplace practices to better facilitate transitions from school to work. For undergraduate programs, the research can provide a basis for educational practices to be adopted or deemphasized, allowing schools of engineering to better prepare students to be creative and successful engineers. For students, this research may lead to the development of more relevant and practically useful engineering knowledge and more accurate understandings of their possible future careers. It is also expected that this research will inform attempts at recruitment and retention of members of underrepresented groups.