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

扩大对工程的参与是美国国家科学基金会的一个主要优先事项。由于其对劳动力发展，国家安全和经济繁荣的重要性，迫切需要资助具有强大智力价值的扩大参与教育研究，并提供可用于扩大整个工程企业参与的研究结果。这个职业研究项目的动机是需要制定实用的策略和框架，帮助代表性不足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。研究结果可能会告诉工程教育界，隐性课程对代表性不足的学生在工程专业的学术坚持的负面影响，以及如何为所有学生创造一个更具包容性的工程学术文化。在工程领域，我们迫切需要更好地理解那些代表性不足的学生在工程学位课程中经常面临的学术和社会挑战。开展这样的研究，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，多机构的方法来研究工程学位课程中的隐藏课程，以及这些课程的动机（即情绪和自我效能），行为，以及三所西班牙裔服务机构的工程教师和学生的行动，一所历史上的黑人学院和大学，以及一所以白人为主的机构。这项研究包括三个阶段：(a)早期探索性研究，(b)设计和开发研究，以及(c)功效研究。更具体地说，第一阶段包括对不同院校类型和高等教育院校分类的土木工程进行定量研究。三个独特的调查-专注于HC在工程和动机，行为和工程教师和学生的行动-将开发和验证。第二阶段包括通过成员检查定性访谈为每个机构开发一套定制的倡导指导培训材料。第三阶段的重点是将项目扩展到每个目标高等院校的其他工程专业，而不是土木工程。通过首先包括目标人群，然后是更广泛的工程学科，该项目的研究结果可能会增加研究结果的普遍性和可转移性，可用于提高代表性不足群体的工程保留和毕业率。

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.