Research Initiation Grants: Nurturing the Creativity of Students with ADHD in Engineering Disciplines

工程技术的突破对我们国家面对未来几十年的重大挑战的能力起着至关重要的作用。在工程教育中，存在着一种迫切的需要，那就是利用发散思维和冒险精神，这是变革工业和做出根本性技术发现所必需的。这项研究建立在文献的基础上，该文献确立了ADHD患者强大的发散思维能力和无与伦比的冒险潜力的一致性。本研究的目的是：1)调查患有注意力缺陷多动障碍(ADHD)的工科学生是否比他们的同龄人有更大的潜力来开发复杂问题的转化解决方案；2)确定显著限制这些学生参与工程项目的障碍，并使他们面临更高的学业失败风险；3)确定促进ADHD学生招收和留住的专业工程项目的基本要素。这项工作具有潜在的变革性，因为它解决了患有ADHD的学生的独特特征的重要性，他们可能面临学习失败的高风险，但具有创造生产力的潜力。使用现有的有效创造力测量方法和已建立的心理测量量表，研究人员建议在ADHD和对照队列中测量学生在工程方面的表现，并通过问卷调查和半结构访谈来确定ADHD学生成功的障碍。这个项目的意义是双重的，因为它有可能对我们国家的增长、竞争力和安全以及学业和社会弱势群体的福祉产生积极影响。患有ADHD的人和他们的家人经历了巨大的痛苦，因为他们的天赋在很大程度上没有得到承认。这个项目可能会导致我们的社会和教育系统对这些人的看法发生范式转变。

Engineering breakthroughs play a crucial role in our nation's ability to face the significant challenges of the coming decades. A critical need exists in engineering education to draw on the divergent thinking and risk-taking necessary for revolutionizing industries and making radical technological discoveries. This study builds on the literature that establishes the concurrence of strong divergent thinking skills and unparalleled risk-taking potential in individuals with ADHD. This group of student is significantly underrepresented, some work suggests that only 3% of college students with ADHD choose to study engineering The objectives of this study are: 1) to investigate if engineering students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have greater potential than their peers to develop transforming solutions for complex problems, 2) to determine impediments that significantly limit the participation of these students in engineering programs and put them at a higher risk of academic failure and 3) to identify the fundamental elements of specialized engineering programs that promote the recruitment and retention of students with ADHD. This work is potentially transformative because it addresses the significance of the unique traits of students with ADHD, who may be at high risk for academic failure but have the potential for creative productivity. Using both existing valid measures of creativity and established psychometric scales, the researchers propose to measure student performance in engineering among ADHD and control cohorts, as well as to identify impediments to ADHD students' success through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The significance of this project is two-fold, as it has the potential to positively affect the growth, competitiveness, and security of our nation, as well as the well-being of an academically and socially vulnerable group of students. Individuals with ADHD and their families experience tremendous distress because their talents largely go unrecognized. This project may lead to a paradigm shift in how these individuals are perceived by both our society and our educational system.