Collaborative Research: Building Social Infrastructure for Achieving Change at Scale

工程教育研究这一新兴领域是我们在教育和培养工程师的方式上进行系统和可持续变革的必要杠杆，以满足当前和未来的国家优先事项和全球挑战。工程教育研究人员用于合作和建立足够深度和多样性的研究项目以实现真正的系统性变革的社会基础设施的强度存在很大差异。在这个项目中，相对的社会基础设施实力分为：与工程教育部门有联系的研究人员；那些与校园内的中心或其他非部门、正式团体有联系的人；还有那些两者都没有联系的人。访问类型的任何组合都可以出现在单个校园中。该项目的目的是发现和实施基于证据的社会基础设施要素，以满足第三群体的需求，同时保持以部门和中心为基础的基础设施的完整性。这些研究人员通常位于他们的大学，其能力与工程教育的实践高度交织在一起；寻找更好的方法来建立网络并支持他们，在研究和实践之间建立更强的联系，促进系统和持久的变化。使用关系会议的社会运动组织方法，研究者将与与中心或部门有联系的工程教育研究人员以及他们的从业者同事进行一系列访谈，以确定共同关注的领域，每个人都可以为变革代理网络做出贡献的资源，以及战略干预的机会，工程教育变革运动可以围绕这些领域建立力量。通过两个阶段的研究，将根本原因分析应用于工程领域教师薪酬结构和多样性问题；在第一种情况下，在高等教育中的结构性经济力量层面开展工作，在第二种情况下，在种族主义、性别歧视、残疾歧视和其他形式的结构性不平等层面开展工作，将指导战略和干预措施，以产生持久的、重大的变化，并从根源上解决问题。通过理解教师行为不仅基于个人动机和制度奖励结构，而且基于当前高等教育的经济和政策框架，这种方法将进一步研究工程教育的变化。该项目的结果将确定加强工程教育网络的机制。特别重要的是那些目前在该领域工作的研究人员，他们与这些网络没有紧密联系。通过修改社区基础设施和领导力发展，支持工程教育研究人员和实践者，将发生广泛而广泛的变化。

The emergent field of engineering education research is a necessary lever to make systemic and sustainable changes in the way we educate and develop engineers to meet current and future national priorities and global challenges. There is a great deal of variation in the strength of the social infrastructure used by engineering education researchers to collaborate and build research projects of sufficient depth and diversity for true systemic change. In this project, relative social infrastructure strength is grouped as follows: those researchers who are connected to a department of engineering education; those who are connected to a center or other non-department, formalized group on their campus; and those who have neither connection. Any combination of access types may be present on a single campus. The purpose of this project is to discover and implement evidence-based social infrastructure elements that meet the needs of the third group while maintaining the integrity of the department- and center-based infrastructure. These researchers are often located in their universities in capacities that are highly intertwined with the practice of engineering education; finding better ways to network and support them creates stronger ties between research and practice, facilitating systemic and lasting change. Using the social movement organizing methodology of relational meetings, the investigators will conduct a series of interviews with engineering education researchers who are connected with centers or departments those who are not, and their practitioner colleagues to identify areas of common concern, resources each can contribute to change agent networks, and opportunities for strategic intervention around which the engineering education change movement can build power. Through two phases of the research root cause analysis will be applied to the problems of faculty reward structures and diversity in engineering; working at the level of structural economic forces in higher education in the first case, and racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of structural inequality in the second case, will guide strategies and interventions to produce lasting, significant change and address problems at their source. This approach will further the research on change in engineering education by understanding faculty behavior as grounded not only in personal motivation and institutional reward structures but also in current economic and policy frameworks for higher education. The results of this project will identify mechanisms to strengthen engineering education networks. Of particular importance are those researchers currently working in the field who are not strongly connected to those networks. Broad-based and widespread change will occur through modifications to communities' infrastructure and leadership development that support both the engineering education researchers and practitioners.