Collaborative Research: Intersectionality of Non-normative Identities in the Cultures of Engineering (InIce)

合作研究：工程文化中非规范身份的交叉性（InIce）

• 批准号: 1428523
• 负责人: Lisa Benson
• 金额: $ 20.56万
• 依托单位: Clemson University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-15 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1428523&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Intersectionality; Non; normative

This project is motivated by the need to increase and diversify the engineering workforce, which will help to increase economic growth and prosperity in the United States. The ultimate goal of this project is to understand more effectively the ways in which students can become interested in pursuing engineering majors in college and how to help them persist through to the end of an engineering degree, with particular attention on those students who may have different views of the role of engineering. This will be accomplished by a large quantitative assessment followed by a longitudinal study of students who are identified as holding various normative or non-normative attitudinal profiles,with a focus on understanding students' feelings of belongingness in engineering and their developing engineering identities. The outcomes of this work will result in practical ways to increase diversity in engineering programs through research-based recruitment and teaching strategies focused on student identities within engineering. Specific course materials will be developed to target graduate students entering academia (who will be teaching future engineering students) to help begin to foster a more welcoming culture in engineering.The theoretical framing of this work is an intersectional approach towards "normativity" in engineering culture. Methodologically, this project will utilize modern statistical techniques to identify clusters of students through their attitudinal data, without the prior imposition of categorizations of students (e.g. gender, race, ethnicity) in order to understand how engineering students' attitudes group into various "normative" and "non-normative" profiles. Following this, we will conduct a longitudinal study of a selection of students from the empirically-identified attitudinal profiles to understand how these students navigate their engineering experiences and develop their identities in their chosen majors. The intellectual merit of this work is an improved understanding of the ways in which different students develop their engineering identities, navigate their engineering communities, and enculturate into their chosen disciplines as well as in the development of practical ways to help students be successful in engineering. This extends previous findings that dissatisfaction and lack of community within engineering are causes for students not choosing or leaving engineering studies. Addressing the core issue of student perceptions of not fitting into engineering can begin to staunch the exodus of talented individuals from engineering. The results of this research will then be incorporated into the development of workshops (for current graduate students and faculty) and widely available graduatecourses designed around diversity in engineering. The broader impact of this work will be to promote an empirically-validated understanding of how to retain a more diverse body of engineering majors including pragmatic solutions for educators and administrators, both at the researchers' institutions and in the wider engineering community.

该项目的动机是需要增加和多样化的工程劳动力，这将有助于提高美国的经济增长和繁荣。该项目的最终目标是更有效地了解学生在大学攻读工程专业的方式，以及如何帮助他们坚持到工程学位结束，特别关注那些可能对工程角色有不同看法的学生。这将是通过一个大的定量评估，然后是谁被确定为持有各种规范或非规范的态度配置文件的学生的纵向研究，重点是了解学生的工程和他们的发展工程身份的幸福感。这项工作的成果将导致实际的方法，通过以研究为基础的招聘和教学策略，重点放在工程内的学生身份，以增加工程项目的多样性。将针对进入学术界的研究生（他们将教授未来的工程专业学生）开发特定的课程材料，以帮助开始在工程中培养更受欢迎的文化。从方法上讲，该项目将利用现代统计技术，通过学生的态度数据确定学生群体，而不事先对学生进行分类（例如性别、种族、族裔），以了解如何将学生的态度分为各种“规范”和“非规范”的类型。在此之后，我们将对从经鉴定的态度概况中选择的学生进行纵向研究，以了解这些学生如何驾驭他们的工程经验，并在他们选择的专业中发展自己的身份。这项工作的智力价值是在不同的学生发展自己的工程身份，导航他们的工程社区，并融入他们所选择的学科，以及在实际的方法来帮助学生在工程中取得成功的发展的方式，提高了理解。这扩展了以前的研究结果，即工程中的不满和缺乏社区是学生不选择或离开工程研究的原因。解决学生认为不适合工程学的核心问题可以开始阻止有才华的人从工程学中流失。这项研究的结果将被纳入研讨会的发展（为当前的研究生和教师）和广泛提供的graduatecourses设计围绕工程的多样性。这项工作的更广泛的影响将是促进对如何保留更多样化的工程专业的理解，包括在研究机构和更广泛的工程界为教育工作者和管理人员提供务实的解决方案。