From Dualism to Integration Investigating Development of Engineering Students' Social and Technical Perceptions

从二元论到“一体化”：工科学生社会观与技术观发展的调查工科教育为学生提供基础技术知识和技能，以及工程身份感。然而，正如先前的社会学研究表明，大多数工程学位课程主要强调技术主题，这往往会边缘化或排除工程身份和工作实践的社会层面。本调查响应这样的研究，探索工程专业学生的认知知觉，他们的社会和技术世界，这两个领域的看法之间的关系，以及这种看法如何发展。本研究采用了嵌入式，顺序混合方法的方法，其中包括一个解释现象学分析工程专业学生如何整合和/或分裂他们的社会和技术的工程能力和身份的看法。该研究的定性部分是在调查学生如何感知和定位其社会和技术世界的仪器数据的基础上进行的。拟议的调查以社会科学、心理学和工程教育的文献为基础，通过检查学生的技术和社会感知。它填补了现有研究的空白，通过调查认知模型，巩固学生如何发展综合，社会技术的看法，需要解决当今工程师面临的广泛的全球性挑战。该项目为改革课程设置奠定了重要基础，以加强工程教育中这些感知能力和相关技能的发展。 这项调查具有广泛的影响，通过通知工程教育工作者的关键经验，塑造学生的技术和社会观念的潜力。研究结果可用于开发课程，评估技术和教学策略，更好地使教育工作者引导学生融入他们的社会和技术观念的连贯整合。这种整合可以培养出能力更强的工程师，他们能够解决以社会技术复杂性为标志的工程问题，包括社会面临的“重大挑战”。在课程中整合社会和技术观念也有可能通过吸引代表性不足的学生群体来增强工程的多样性，这些学生可能会被吸引到更综合的社会技术方法中。

From Dualism to "Integration":Investigating Development of Engineering Students' Social and Technical PerceptionsEngineering education provides students with foundational technical knowledge and skills, as well as a sense of engineering identity. Yet as prior sociological studies suggest, most engineering degree programs place primary emphasis on technical topics, which tends to marginalize or exclude the social dimensions of engineering identity and work practices. This investigation responds to such research by exploring engineering students' cognitive perceptions of their social and technical worlds, the relationship between their perceptions of these two domains, and how such perceptions develop. This study employs an embedded, sequential mixed-methods approach, which includes an interpretive phenomenological analysis of how engineering students integrate and/or split their social and technical perceptions of engineering ability and identity. This qualitative portion of the study is preceded and supported by data from instruments that probe how students perceive and orient to their social and technical worlds.The proposed investigation builds on literature from the social sciences, psychology, and engineering education by examining students' technical and social perceptions. It fills a gap in the existing research by investigating the cognitive models that undergird how students develop the integrated, sociotechnical perception needed to address the broad, global challenges facing engineers today. This project lays key foundations for reforming curricula to enhance the development of these perceptive abilities and associated skills within engineering education. This investigation has potential for broad impact by informing engineering educators of critical experiences that shape the technical and social perceptions of students. The findings can be used to develop curricula, assessment techniques, and pedagogical strategies that better enable educators to guide students into a coherent integration of their social and technical perceptions. Such integration can cultivate engineers with enhanced capabilities who can tackle the engineering problems marked by sociotechnical complexity, including the "grand challenges" that face society. Integrating social and technical perceptions within the curriculum also has potential to enhance diversity in engineering by appealing to underrepresented groups of students who may be drawn toward more integrated, sociotechnical approaches to engineering.