CAREER: Advocating for Engineering through Hidden Curricula: A Multi-Institutional Mixed Method Approach

扩大对工程的参与是国家科学基金会的一项主要优先事项。由于其对劳动力发展、国家安全和经济繁荣的重要性，迫切需要为扩大参与度教育研究提供资金，这些教育研究具有很强的智力价值，并提供可用于扩大整个工程企业参与度的成果。这一职业研究项目的动机是需要制定实用的战略和框架，帮助未被充分代表的学生成功地驾驭隐藏的课程，这些课程经常阻碍或阻碍他们在工程学位课程中的学术坚持。研究结果可能会向工程教育界提供信息，说明隐藏课程对未被充分代表的学生在工程领域的学习坚持性的负面影响，以及如何为所有学生创造更具包容性的工程学术文化。在工程学领域，迫切需要更好地了解在工程学学位课程中，代表人数不足的学生经常面临的学术和社会挑战。进行这样的研究性研究，为未被充分代表的学生提供了改变工程教育和工程实践的巨大潜力。这个职业研究项目建议利用混合方法，多机构方法来研究工程师学位课程中的隐藏课程，以及这些课程在三个西班牙裔服务机构，一个历史上由黑人学院和大学，一个以白人机构为主的服务机构的工程学教职员工和学生的动机(即，情绪和自我效能)、行为和行动。这项研究研究包括三个阶段：(A)早期探索性研究，(B)设计和开发研究，和(C)功效研究。更具体地说，第一阶段包括对不同类型和分类的高等教育机构进行土木工程方面的量化研究。将开发和验证三个独特的调查--侧重于工程学中的HC以及工程学教师和学生的动机、行为和行动。第二阶段包括通过成员核查定性访谈，为每个机构制定一套定制的宣传指导培训材料。第三阶段的重点是将该项目扩展到每个目标高等学府的土木工程以外的其他工程专业。通过首先包括目标人群，然后是更广泛的工程学科，该项目的调查结果可能会增加调查结果的概括性和可转移性，从而可用于改善代表性不足群体的工程学保留率和毕业率。

Broadening participation in engineering is a major priority for the National Science Foundation. Because of its importance to workforce development, national security, and economic prosperity, there is a pressing need to fund broadening participation educational research with strong intellectual merit and that render findings that can be used to broadening participation throughout the engineering enterprise. This CAREER research project is motivated by the need to develop practical strategies and frameworks for helping underrepresented students successfully navigate hidden curriculum that often deter or impede their academic persistence in engineering degree programs. Research findings are likely to inform the engineering education community about negative impacts of hidden curriculum on underrepresented students' academic persistence in engineering and how to create a more inclusive engineering academic culture for all students. In engineering, there is strong need to better understand the academic and social challenges that underrepresented students often face in engineering degree programs. Conducting research studies, such as this, offers immense potential to transform engineering education and engineering practice for underrepresented students.This CAREER research project proposes to utilize a mixed-method, multi-institutional approach to study hidden curriculum in engineer degree programs and these curricula the motivations (i.e., emotions and self-efficacy), behaviors, and actions of engineering faculty and students at three Hispanic Serving Institutions, one Historically Black College and University, and one Predominantly White Institution. This research study comprises three phases: (a) an early stage exploratory study, (b) a design and development study, and (c) an efficacy study. More specifically, Phase 1 consists of conducting a quantitative study in civil engineering across different institutional types and classifications of institutions of higher education. Three unique surveys - focused on HC in engineering and the motivations, behaviors, and actions of engineering faculty and students - will be developed and validated. Phase 2 involves developing a set of custom-made advocacy mentoring training materials for each institution through member-checking qualitative interviews. Phase 3 focuses on expanding the project to other engineering specialties, beyond civil engineering, for each of the targeted institutions of higher learning. By including a targeted population first, followed by a wider spectrum of engineering disciplines, the findings from this project are likely to result in increased generalizability and transferability of the findings that could be used to improve engineering retention and graduation rates among underrepresented groups.