Research Initiation: Facilitating Professional Formation of Engineers through Strategic Agency of Engineering Faculty

专业协会是生态系统的重要组成部分，通过塑造其学科的技术方向和实践工程师对公共健康、安全和福利的道德责任，促进工程师的专业形成。在过去的十年中，这些专业协会与工程教育机构合作，强调需要将工程的社会影响与形成工程专业人员所需的技术经济基础相结合。尽管做出了这些努力，学术机构和专业团体之间的知识转移及其对本科工程形成的影响仍未得到很好的理解。先前的研究探讨了教师对工程专业的社会影响以及他们在实施工程课程变革时遇到的挑战的立场。然而，仍有必要揭示工程学院如何制定战略，以及他们在专业协会中的参与在这些行动中可以发挥的作用。本项目将进行一项定性研究，以探索工程学院在专业协会中转变教学实践以解决课堂上的社会影响时所扮演的战略角色。在数据驱动的领域，如工程，叙述性探究研究方法提供了机会，将化学工程教师的经验放在最前沿，并找到可与其他工程学科共享的范例循证策略。这项纵向定性研究将使用战略代理（SA）框架来理解工程学院如何通过改变教学实践，在工程师的形成过程中创造积极的社会变化，从而成为专业协会的变革推动者。该框架的三个维度将涉及反思、策略和行动，随着时间的推移，个人将参与由专业协会内的多机构工程学院组成的实践社区（CoP）支持的活动。SA表明，没有反思，就无法制定战略，也无法采取行动。美国化学工程师学会（American Institute of Chemical Engineers, AIChE）之所以被选为专业协会，是因为其对化学工程本科教育的既定承诺，以及研究人员在该组织中的地位。本研究旨在回答以下由SA模型指导的多维研究问题：由化学工程教师组成的实践社区（即AIChE）中的反思、策略和行动如何随着时间的推移而变化，同时改变解决工程专业社会影响的教学实践？在本定性研究中，第一阶段将侧重于定性方法的伦理验证，以探索参与者在了解工程中的战略代理和社会影响时的叙述。在第二阶段，工作小组将在专业协会内成立，并提供八个月的协助。一旦形成CoP作为本研究的设置，有目的和方便的抽样将被用来寻找愿意分享他们的叙述的个人。在这项纵向研究中，访谈和日记条目将被收集，并使用体内和集中编码相结合的方法进行编码。最后，在第三阶段，数据和解释的最终修订将导致共同构建一个反映教师战略代理（在本CoP中开发）的叙述，因为他们在课堂上改变了他们的教学实践。该项目的成果将促进工程教育界的认识，即在专业协会的支持下，实践社区如何影响愿意积极改变学生成为工程师的工程学院的战略代理。了解这个框架如何解释社区支持在培养个人成为变革推动者中的作用，可以帮助其他工程组织实施变革行动。该奖项反映了国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Professional societies are a crucial part of the ecosystem that fosters the professional formation of engineers by, among other things, shaping the technical direction of their disciplines and the ethical responsibility of practicing engineers towards public health, safety, and welfare. In the last decade, in partnership with engineering education institutions, these professional societies have emphasized the need to include the social implications of engineering in parallel to techno-economic fundamentals needed to form engineering professionals. Despite these efforts, the transfer of knowledge between academic institutions and professional societies, and its influence in undergraduate engineering formation, is not well understood. Prior studies have explored faculty stances on what social implications mean for the engineering profession and what challenges they have encountered in implementing transformations in the engineering curriculum. However, there is still a need to uncover how engineering faculty develop strategies and the role their involvement in professional societies can play in these actions. This project will conduct a qualitative study to explore the strategic agency of engineering faculty involved in professional societies as they transform their teaching practices to address social implications in their classrooms. In a data-driven field such as engineering, narrative inquiry research methods provide the opportunity to place the experiences of chemical engineering faculty at the forefront and find exemplar evidence-based strategies that can be shared with other engineering disciplines.This longitudinal qualitative study will use the Strategic Agency (SA) framework to understand how engineering faculty involved in professional societies can become change agents by transforming instructional practices that create a positive social change in the formation of engineers. The three dimensions of the framework will involve reflection, strategy, and action over time as individuals participate in activities supported by a community of practice (CoP) formed by multi-institutional engineering faculty within a professional society. SA suggests that without reflection, strategies cannot be developed, and actions cannot occur. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) was selected as the professional society site due to its established commitment to chemical engineering undergraduate education and the researcher's positionality within the organization. The study aims to answer the following multidimensional research question guided by the SA model: How do the reflections, strategies, and actions within a community of practice (i.e., AIChE) composed of chemical engineering faculty vary over time while changing instructional practices that address social implications in the engineering profession? In this qualitative study, Phase I will focus on the ethical validation of qualitative methods to explore participant narratives as they learn about strategic agency and social implications in engineering. In Phase II, the CoP will be formed within the professional society and facilitated for eight months. Once the CoP is formed as a setting for this study, purposeful and convenient sampling will be used to find individuals willing to share their narratives. In this longitudinal study, interviews and journal entries will be collected and coded using a combination of in-vivo and focused coding. Finally, in Phase III, final revisions of the data and interpretations will lead to co-constructing a narrative that reflects faculty strategic agency (developed in this CoP) as they transform their instructional practices in the classroom. The outcomes from this project will advance the engineering education community's knowledge of how communities of practice, supported by professional societies, can influence strategic agency among engineering faculty willing to positively change their students' formation as engineers. It is expected that understanding how this framework explains the role of community support in fostering individuals to become change agents can help other engineering organizations in implementing transformational actionsThis 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.