Understanding and Reshaping Systemic Communication Patterns in Engineering Education

工程学在招聘和留住学生方面面临着持续的挑战，尤其是来自代表性不足的群体的学生。这个领域通常被认为是一个神秘的、高度技术性的领域，研究表明，这一形象并没有引起所有潜在学生的共鸣，也没有公正地对待这个职业可能为解决21世纪的问题做出的潜在贡献。为了应对这些相互关联的挑战，工程教育工作者和专业团体已经投入了相当大的努力，通过研究和公共信息活动来改变人们对该领域的看法。这个项目正在研究这些关于工程的看法或叙述从何而来，以及它们以何种方式对该领域的文化和教育实践产生影响。该项目借鉴了复杂系统科学和媒体研究领域的理论，以经验调查集体的、自我定义的叙述如何隐含地和普遍地塑造了支撑工程文化的共同信念、解释和价值观。通过识别和描述这种排他性的叙述，该项目为未来的工作奠定了经验基础，旨在使工程管理人员、教育工作者和学生能够超越关于工程的狭隘和限制性叙述的限制，并扩大关于工程是什么、可能是什么以及谁参与了重要的社会角色的对话。尽管不断努力使工程多样化，但本科课程的特点仍然是白人、男性和特权人群占主导地位，他们偏爱客观、收敛和定量的思维方式。借助复杂系统理论，该项目探讨了根植于社会自创生机制的这种明显的系统性变革阻力；也就是说，复杂的社会系统通过自我定义的、持久的文化模式进行自我复制的趋势。根据系统理论家的说法，这些模式是通过在系统中被告知、复述和制定的通信流来创建和维护的。利用先前关于工程的认知和公共信息的工作，本项目将系统思维理论框架与叙事方法相结合，以经验方式研究工程叙事如何自创地塑造、划分和影响制度层面的互动。研究设计包括收集和叙事分析公开可得的新闻文章和主要专业机构发表的工程教育和实践报告，以及探索性的民族志观察和叙事分析在制度背景下的工程信息交流。该项目将产生一个经验基础，理论上连贯的理解工程教育系统，因为它是嵌入在更大的通信网络。更具体地说，目标是开发对通信模式的系统理解，这些模式的功能是将某些工程理解置于其他理解之上。通过经验识别和明确命名这些模式，这项工作的变革潜力在于赋予工程教育工作者和其他利益相关者批判性地检查并最终改变塑造我们工程项目文化的主导叙事，在他们的个人互动中，最终在集体国家层面。

Engineering faces persistent challenges in recruiting and retaining students, particularly from underrepresented groups. The field is often perceived as an arcane, highly technical domain, an image that studies show does not resonate with all potential students and does not do justice to the potential contribution that this profession could make to solve 21st century problems. In addressing these connected challenges, engineering educators and professional bodies have invested considerable efforts towards changing perceptions of the field through research and public information campaigns. This project is examining where these perceptions, or narratives, about engineering come from, and in what ways do they exert an influence on the culture and educational practices of the field. The project draws on theory from complex systems sciences and the field of media studies to empirically investigate how collective, self-definitional narratives implicitly and pervasively shape the shared beliefs, explanations, and values that underpin the culture of engineering. By identifying and describing such exclusionary narratives, the project lays the empirical foundation for future work aimed at empowering engineering administrators, educators, and students to reach beyond the confines of narrow and limiting narratives about engineering and broaden the conversation about what engineering is, could be, and who participates in the important societal role of the profession.Despite ongoing efforts to diversify engineering, undergraduate programs continue to be characterized by a predominately white, male, and privileged population with a preference for objective, convergent, and quantitative ways of thinking. Drawing on complex systems theory, this project explores this apparent systemic resistance to change as rooted in mechanisms of social autopoiesis; that is, the tendency for complex social systems to reproduce themselves through self-definitional, persistent cultural patterns. According to systems theorists, these patterns are created and maintained through communication flows that are told, retold, and enacted in the system. Leveraging prior work on perceptions and public messages of engineering, this project combines a systems thinking theoretical framework with a narrative methodology to empirically examine how engineering narratives autopoietically shape, demarcate, and otherwise influence interactions at an institutional level. The research design comprises the collection and narrative analysis of publicly available news articles and engineering education and practice reports published by key professional bodies, and the exploratory ethnographic observation and narrative analysis of information exchanges about engineering in an institutional context. The project will generate an empirically grounded, theoretically coherent understanding of the engineering education system as it is embedded in larger communication networks. More specifically, the goal is to develop a systemic understanding of the communication patterns that function to privilege certain understandings of engineering over others. By empirically identifying and explicitly naming these patterns, the transformative potential of this work lies in empowering engineering educators and other stakeholders to critically examine and consequently change the dominant narratives that shape the culture of our engineering programs, in their individual interactions and ultimately at the collective national level.