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

合作研究：研究：早期职业工程师过渡到实践时的公平和道德经验以及对工程师培养的影响

• 批准号: 2135329
• 负责人: Amir Hedayati-Mehdia
• 金额: $ 19.07万
• 依托单位: University of New Mexico
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2135329&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Early; Career; Engineers

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.

交通系统、计算算法和医疗保健设备是工程专业开发的众多设计、产品和系统之一，对社会产生重要影响。工程师所做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建立在现有的不平等基础上，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，有色人种，残疾人，LGBTQ+社区成员和白色女性在多年努力增加多样性后仍然代表性不足。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态度和行为。工程专业的学生了解工程师的道德义务，以造福人类，而他们在学校，它是越来越普遍的工程专业的学生，特别是了解如何多样性，公平和包容性是很重要的工程专业。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，其目标是创造更具包容性的环境。在这个项目中，我们将研究新的工程师，在他们的第一个五年的实践，了解这些工程师是如何使用从学校的教训和他们在工作场所收到的信息，以塑造他们的专业行为在一个关键的过渡阶段。本研究的最终目标是帮助培养有道德和公平意识的工程师，他们准备用自己的专业工作来提高社会和工程工作场所的公平性。本项目将使用一个连续的混合方法设计，包括全国调查和访谈。研究过程将记录涉及公平和道德的早期职业工程师的看法和经验，以及他们根据在工程学校和工作场所的学习经验解决这些问题的准备情况。我们的研究旨在回答以下问题：1）他们的学术准备和接触公平和道德问题的哪些方面，早期职业工程师发现相关的，并在他们的专业工作中使用？2)早期职业工程师在公平和道德方面的在职学习经验是什么？有什么类型的资源可用于支持这些学习经验？3)职业生涯早期的工程师对公平和道德的看法以及它们在工作环境中人际交往的重要性是什么？4)职业生涯早期的工程师对公平和道德的看法以及它们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多大程度上和以何种方式对工程中的公平和道德问题有不同的看法和动机？我们将利用我们的研究结果，根据参与者遇到的具有公平和道德影响的决策的情况，创建学习活动（如视频）。这些活动可以由工程教师使用，以纳入现实的早期职业生涯的情况下，涉及公平和道德的本科教育。该项目设有一个顾问委员会，成员包括专业协会和行业的成员，他们将帮助指导研究，并将我们的研究结果传达给可以使用我们的研究结果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（ER 2）共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF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。