GSE/RES: Uncovering tacit knowledge about gender, communication and interpersonal interactions in engineering

智力价值：路易斯维尔大学正在进行一个基于以下理论的项目：在工程学校和工作场所取得成功的女性已经掌握了关于如何在这种环境中成功互动的默契(个人知道但通常无法明确表达的假设、习惯和策略)。该项目的目标是利用这一隐性知识，并使其浮出水面，为刚刚进入工程学和类似的男性主导领域的年轻妇女和女孩提供资源。该项目的第一阶段通过采访和领导约100名工程专业本科生女性，确定了女性在男性主导的环境中可能面临的常见问题情景。第二阶段以这些情况为基础，对来自不同背景的大约60名女性工程学教员和专业人员进行了访谈。对大约20名男性专业人士的采访将被用作对照人群。这些访谈将使我们能够识别关于工程沟通的默会知识的一些特征。第三阶段将包括约80名本科生组成的焦点小组，以复查调查结果和结论是否一致。更广泛的影响：该项目将产生关于性别如何与工程等男性文化的话语和人际规范相互作用的新知识。它将经常被提及的阻碍女性坚持工程学的障碍(如自信、刻板印象威胁和学校氛围)的研究与工程学交流的研究联系起来，为理解这些问题提供了一个新的视角。最重要的是，该项目将确定女性已经成功地用来导航甚至改变男性领域的具体战略，提供能够解决女性在工程领域的“漏水管道”问题的信息。

Intellectual Merit: The University of Louisville is undertaking a project based upon the theory that women who have been successful in engineering schools and workplaces have developed tacit knowledge (assumptions, habits, and strategies that individuals know but usually cannot articulate explicitly) about how to interact successfully in this environment. The goal of this project is to tap into this tacit knowledge and bring it to the surface where it can serve as a resource for young women and girls just entering engineering and similar male-dominated fields. Stage one of the project identifies common problem scenarios that women might face in male-dominated settings by interviewing and conducting focus groups with approximately 100 undergraduate women majoring in engineering. Stage two uses these situations as the basis for discourse completion interviews with approximately 60 female engineering faculty and professionals from a range of backgrounds. Interviews with approximately 20 male professionals will be used as a control population. These interviews will enable the identification of some features of tacit knowledge about communication in engineering. Stage three will involve focus groups of about 80 undergraduate students to double-check whether the findings and conclusions resonate. Broader Impacts: This project will produce new knowledge about how gender interacts with the discourse and interpersonal norms of masculine cultures such as engineering. It connects research on frequently cited barriers to women's persistence in engineering (such as self-confidence, stereotype threat, and school climate) to research on engineering communication, providing a new lens for understanding these issues. Most importantly, this project will identify specific strategies that women have successfully used to navigate and even change masculine fields, providing information that can address the problem of the "leaky pipeline" of women in engineering.