Collaborative Research: Research: Early-Career Engineers Experiences with Equity and Ethics as They Transition to Practice and Implications for Formation of Engineers

交通系统、计算算法和医疗设备是工程专业开发的许多设计、产品和系统中的一部分，这些设计、产品和系统对社会有重要影响。工程师做出的决定可以帮助促进社会的公平和正义，或者这些决定可以增加和扩大现有的不平等，导致对少数群体的不利后果。此外，工程专业是一个有着排斥历史的领域，在多年努力增加多样性之后，有色人种、残疾人、LGBTQ+社区成员和白人女性的代表性仍然不足。为了解决这些对工程实践的担忧，我们需要了解并改变新工程师如何围绕工作场所的社会公平和包容形成他们的态度和行为。工程专业的学生在学校里学习工程师造福人类的道德义务，而且越来越多的工程专业的学生专门学习多样性、公平和包容性对工程专业的重要性。招聘组织也可以提供关于多样性和包容性问题的学习机会，以创造更包容的环境等各种目标。在这个项目中，我们将研究新工程师，在他们头五年的实践中，了解这些工程师如何利用学校的课程和他们在工作场所收到的信息来塑造他们在关键过渡阶段的专业行为。本研究的最终目标是帮助培养具有道德和公平意识的工程师，他们准备利用他们的专业工作来提高社会和工程工作场所的公平。本项目将采用顺序混合方法设计，包括全国调查和访谈。研究过程将记录早期职业工程师在公平和道德方面的看法和经验，以及他们根据在工程学院和工作场所的学习经历来解决这些问题的准备。我们的研究旨在回答以下问题：1)早期职业工程师在他们的学术准备和对公平和道德问题的接触中发现哪些方面与他们的专业工作相关并使用？2)早期职业工程师在职学习中与公平和道德相关的经验是什么？有哪些类型的资源可以支持这些学习经验？3)早期职业工程师对公平和道德的看法及其在工作环境中人际交往中的重要性是什么？4)早期职业工程师对公平和道德的看法及其在工程师专业工作中的重要性是什么？此外，哪些经历/情况促成了这些看法？5)具有不同社会身份的早期职业工程师在工程公平和道德问题上的观点和行动动机在多大程度上和以何种方式不同？我们将使用我们的发现来创建学习活动（如视频），基于我们的参与者遇到具有公平和道德影响的决策的情况。工程教师可以利用这些活动，将涉及公平和道德的早期职业现实情况纳入本科教育。该项目有一个顾问委员会，包括专业协会和行业的成员，他们将帮助指导研究，并将我们的发现传达给可以利用我们的发现来塑造工程师早期职业发展的组织。该项目由工程师形成研究（RFE）和道德与责任研究（ER2）计划共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Transportation systems, computing algorithms, and healthcare devices are among the many designs, products, and systems developed by the engineering profession that have important impacts on society. The decisions made by engineers can help advance fairness and justice in society, or these decisions can increase and build upon existing inequities leading to adverse consequences for minoritized populations. Furthermore, the engineering profession is a field with a history of exclusion where People of Color, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and white women remain underrepresented after years of effort to increase diversity. To address these concerns about engineering practice, we need to understand and then transform how new engineers form their attitudes and behaviors around social equity and inclusion in the workplace. Engineering students learn about the ethical obligations of engineers to benefit humanity while they are in school, and it is becoming more common for engineering students to learn specifically about how diversity, equity, and inclusion are important to the engineering profession. And hiring organizations might also provide learning opportunities on issues of diversity and inclusion with various goals such as creating more inclusive environment. In this project we will study new engineers, in their first five years of practice, to learn how these engineers are using lessons from school and the messages they receive in the workplace to shape their professional behavior at a key transitional stage. The ultimate goal of this study is to help develop ethical and equity minded engineers who are prepared to use their professional work to enhance fairness in society and in engineering workplaces.This project will use a sequential mixed methods design including a national survey and interviews. The research process will document the perceptions and experiences of early-career engineers involving equity and ethics and their preparedness to address these issues based on their learning experiences at both engineering school and the workplace. Our research seeks to answer the following questions: 1) What aspects of their academic preparation and exposure to issues of equity and ethics do early-career engineers find relevant and use in their professional work? 2) What are early-career engineers’ experiences of on-the-job learning related to equity and ethics and what types of resources are available to support these learning experiences? 3) What are the perceptions of early-career engineers about equity and ethics and their importance in interpersonal interactions in the work environment? 4) What are the perceptions of early-career engineers about equity and ethics and their importance in the professional work of engineers? In addition, what experiences/situations have contributed to these perceptions? And 5) To what extent and in what ways do early-career engineers with different social identities have differing views and motivation to act on issues of equity and ethics in engineering? We will use our findings to create learning activities (such as videos) based on the situations where our participants encountered decisions with equity and ethics implications. These activities can be used by engineering instructors to incorporate realistic early-career situations involving equity and ethics in undergraduate education. This project has an advisory board including members of professional societies and industry who will help guide the study and convey our findings to organizations that can use our findings to shape early-career professional development of engineers.This project is jointly funded by the Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) and the Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) programs.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.