Collaborative Research: EAGER: MAKER: Studying the Role of Failure in Design and Making

虽然“失败”这个词会让人联想到负面的东西，但目前在许多专业领域，失败被视为创新和发展的驱动力。先前的研究也表明，对于STEM专业人士和教育工作者来说，失败在设计和制造提高学习、坚持和其他非认知技能（如自我效能和独立性）方面发挥着重要作用。通过调查年轻人和教育工作者如何处理失败的时刻，他们如何解释这意味着什么，以及他们如何回应，我们将能够更好地了解每一部分经验的动态。该研究小组将与来自城市、郊区和农村的年轻人、来自第一修正案学校或有资格获得免费/减价午餐的学生、来自少数种族和民族群体的学生以及将英语作为第二语言学习的学生合作。这些年轻人来自传统上在STEM和制造业中代表性不足的群体，研究表明，当他们经历失败时，他们更有可能经历负面结果。这个项目的智力价值集中在建立一个基本的理解，即年轻人是如何触发和经历失败的，教育工作者在这个过程中扮演什么角色，以及可以做些什么来增加毅力和学习，而不是把失败作为最终状态。研究小组将通过使用定性和定量研究方法来调查这些问题。特别是，该小组将设计和评估干预措施的有效性，以提高青年和教育工作者注意和应对失败的能力，并增加积极的结果（例如，复原力）。选择研究地点是因为它们将允许从广泛的背景中收集有关青年的数据。研究小组还将测试和修改他们的假设模型，即通过失败来影响持久性的因素。该项目是NSF“制造商致同事信”（DCL）项目（NSF 15-086）的一部分，是计算机与信息科学与工程（CISE）、教育与人力资源（EHR）和工程（ENG）部门的合作投资。

While the term 'failure' brings to mind negative associations, there is a current focus on failure as a driver of innovation and development in many professional fields. It is also emerging from prior research that for STEM professionals and educators, failure plays an important role in designing and making to increase learning, persistence and other noncognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence. By investigating how youth and educators attend to moments of failure, how they interpret what this means, and how they respond, we will be better able to understand the dynamics of each part of the experience. The research team will be working with youth from urban, suburban and rural settings, students from Title I schools or who qualify for free/reduced-price lunches, those from racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as students who are learning English as a second language. These youth are from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM and in making, and research indicates they are more likely to experience negative outcomes when they experience failure.The intellectual merit of this project centers on establishing a baseline understanding of how failure in making is triggered and experienced by youth, what role educators play in the process, and what can be done to increase persistence and learning, rather than failure being an end-state. The research team will investigate these issues through the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In particular, the team will design and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on increasing the abilities of youth and educators in noticing and responding to failures and increasing positive (e.g., resilience) outcomes. Research sites are selected because they will allow collection of data on youth from a wide range of backgrounds. The research team will also work to test and revise their hypothesized model of the influence of factors on persistence through failures in making. This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering (ENG).