Research: Invisible Gendered Experiences in Engineering Education

现有的研究表明，学生的高等教育经历是由性别决定的。这一点在工程学领域表现得尤为明显，一些学生因性别而面临着额外的成功障碍。该项目将通过协作、社区参与的研究方法来调查性别问题。特别是，研究人员将与工科本科生合作，记录工程方面的具体经验。研究人员将优先考虑协作；他们将与学生一起确定促进积极教育成果的策略，并在推动学生在工程项目中取得成功的最后将这些策略与工程部门、教师和管理人员分享。该研究项目有三个目标：(I)将批判性理论和方法注入工程教育研究；(Ii)记录、检查和分享不同性别的本科生如何找到归属感和成功；以及(Iii)与研究参与者合作，提出建议，将工程项目转变为更具包容性和公正性的空间。分析将有助于理解在面对性别边缘化以及与其他相互交错的身份相联系的潜在征服时的复原力。该项目整合了关键的协作人种学和研究公正方法，这些方法集中了研究人口是根据他们自己的经验而成为最重要的专家的原则。通过让主体社区参与知识生产、分析和分配，权力被转移到主体社区。研究的三个阶段包括确定参与者和新出现的主题的外联问卷、个人访谈和现场协作性民族志观察。最初的外展问卷将通过校园文化团体和其他校园社区、点对点交流和工程部门在全国范围内分发。表示对进一步合作感兴趣的一组受访者(n=20)将被邀请参加现象学访谈，这些访谈将探索学生在工程领域的性别经历，以及激发弹性的支持性结构的经验。其中五名学生将被邀请参加为期五天的实地考察。在此期间，学生将与研究人员合作，对学生的校园社区和支持网络进行民族志观察。此外，还将创建一个以保密和身份保护为优先事项的在线社区，并邀请所有完成初始问卷调查的学生加入。在这里，学生社区和研究人员将共同努力分析数据，记录社区确定的成功和毅力的来源，并制定有效做法、政策和规范的建议，以促进包容、公平和公正的学习环境。这个项目具有重要的学术意义，因为它提供了一个更广泛的当代性别框架，以及这些身份如何影响工程师的职业形成，这是一个到目前为止很少受到关注的领域。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Existing research shows that a student's experience in higher education is shaped by one's gender. This has been shown to be particularly true in engineering, where some students face additional barriers to their success based on their gender. This project will investigate gender through collaborative, community-engaged research methodologies. In particular, researchers will work with undergraduate engineering students to document engineering-specific experiences. Researchers will prioritize collaboration; together with the students, they will identify strategies which foster positive educational outcomes and share these with engineering departments, faculty and administrators towards the end of advancing the success of students in engineering programs.The research project has three objectives: (i) to infuse critical theory and methodologies into engineering education research; (ii) to record, examine, and share how undergraduate engineering students of different genders find belonging and success; and (iii) to collaborate with research participants to generate recommendations toward transforming engineering programs into more inclusive and just spaces. Analysis will inform understandings of resiliency in the face of gender marginalization as well as potential subjugation linked to other intersecting identities. This project integrates critical collaborative ethnography and research justice methodologies, which centralize the principle of the research population being the foremost experts on their own experiences. Power is shifted to the subject community through involving them in knowledge production, analysis, and distribution. Three phases of research include an outreach questionnaire to identify participants and emerging themes, personal interviews, and on-site collaborative ethnographic observation. The initial outreach questionnaire will be distributed nationally through campus cultural groups and other campus communities, peer-to-peer communication, and through engineering departments. A subset (n=20) of the respondents who indicate an interest in further collaboration will be invited to participate in phenomenological interviews that will explore students' experiences of gender in engineering, and experiences with supportive structures that provoke resiliency. Five of these students will then be invited to participate in a five-day site visit. During this period, the student will collaboratively engage with the researchers in ethnographic observation of the student's campus community and support network. In addition, an online community which prioritizes confidentiality and identity protection will be created and all students who completed the initial questionnaire will be invited to join. Here, the student community and the researchers will work together to analyze data, to document community-identified sources of success and perseverance, and to develop recommendations of effective practices, policies and norms that contribute to inclusive, equitable and just learning environments. This project is of significant intellectual importance because it provides a broader contemporary framing of gender and how these identities affect the professional formation of engineers, an area that has received very little attention to-date.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.