CAREER: Enabling Transformational Service-Learning in Engineering through Critically Reflexive Practice

职业：通过批判性反思实践实现工程领域的变革性服务学习

• 批准号: 2143867
• 负责人: David A Delaine
• 金额: $ 59.72万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2027-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2143867&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Enabling; Transformational; Service; Learning

This CAREER project will substantially help improve the education of future engineers by preparing them to address societal challenges in meaningful ways. Undergraduate engineering coursework is heavily focused on technical preparation. However, in addition to technical skills, engineers should learn how to understand and address the needs and perspectives of the people who will be impacted by their technical solutions. This project will address this need by focusing on service-learning, that is, courses where engineering students work with communities outside of the university to help resolve a local challenge. The great benefit of service-learning is that students can learn to be socially responsible engineering professionals while positively impacting local communities. However, in practice, service-learning is very difficult which can lead to harmful impacts on the student and community participants. When not performed carefully, these courses can teach students to dismiss community perspectives and treat communities as laboratories rather than as collections of people with unique social, cultural, and historical backgrounds. Within this problem, this project will help ensure that the way engineering service-learning courses are taught maximizes benefits for all participants through transformational service-learning. More specifically, this project will investigate how instructors develop the skills, attitudes, and knowledge they need to design and implement transformational service-learning. To pursue transformational service-learning, it is necessary that educators acknowledge the substantial role that race, power, and privilege play within this pedagogy. To support educators’ understanding of the role of these factors in service-learning, a promising approach involves first developing educators’ critical reflexivity: the process by which an educator creates an internal dialog and evaluates their own positionality to articulate its impact on educational processes and outcomes. This project will engage the framework of critical reflexivity, addressing research questions that explore (1) service-learning engineering educators’ descriptions of their assumptions about service-learning and their own positionalities within this context, (2) the way these assumptions and positionalities impact their approaches to teaching service-learning, and (3) the impact that critical reflexivity has in supporting transformational service-learning outcomes. This investigation will begin with interviews, and findings will be used to engage educators from a community of practice that focuses on reflection and action to produce further knowledge. The results will inform the development, assessment, and validation of a short course and guidebook to propagate this new knowledge while also refining this project’s findings. Along with dissemination through publications and conferences, this propagation approach enables widespread impact of these outcomes by closely engaging potential adopters, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will pursue transformational service-learning. Through partnering with large networks of engineering and service-learning educators both nationally and internationally, these products will be used to promote a paradigm shift in engineering service-leaning towards impactful community-oriented approaches. This CAREER project will create new knowledge about (a) how SL engineering educator positionality and assumptions hinder and enable service-learning practice; (b) how critical reflexivity influences engineering educators’ adoption of approaches to elicit transformational service-learning; and (c) how engineering educators can develop service-learning coursework to achieve transformational impacts for social justice and equity across marginalized communities. Collectively, these outcomes will lead to the development of engineering civic-minded engineering citizens who equitably engage with local communities and are prepared for resolving complex societal challenges.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.

该职业项目将极大地帮助改善未来工程师的教育，让他们做好准备以有意义的方式应对社会挑战。本科工程课程主要侧重于技术准备。然而，除了技术技能之外，工程师还应该学习如何理解和解决将受到其技术解决方案影响的人们的需求和观点。该项目将通过关注服务学习来满足这一需求，即工程学生与大学以外的社区合作以帮助解决当地挑战的课程。服务学习的巨大好处是，学生可以学习成为具有社会责任感的工程专业人士，同时对当地社区产生积极影响。然而，在实践中，服务学习非常困难，这可能会给学生和社区参与者带来有害影响。如果执行不仔细，这些课程可能会教会学生忽视社区观点，并将社区视为实验室，而不是具有独特社会、文化和历史背景的人们的集合。在这个问题中，该项目将有助于确保工程服务学习课程的教学方式通过转型服务学习最大限度地为所有参与者带来利益。更具体地说，该项目将调查教师如何培养设计和实施变革性服务学习所需的技能、态度和知识。为了追求变革性的服务学习，教育工作者有必要承认种族、权力和特权在这种教学法中发挥的重要作用。为了支持教育工作者理解这些因素在服务学习中的作用，一种有前景的方法是首先培养教育工作者的批判性反思能力：教育工作者创建内部对话并评估自己的立场以阐明其对教育过程和结果的影响的过程。该项目将采用批判性反身性框架，解决研究问题，探索（1）服务学习工程教育者对服务学习假设的描述以及他们自己在此背景下的立场，（2）这些假设和立场如何影响他们的服务学习教学方法，以及（3）批判性反身性在支持变革性服务学习成果方面的影响。这项调查将从访谈开始，调查结果将用于吸引实践社区的教育工作者参与，重点关注反思和行动以产生更多知识。结果将为短期课程和指南的开发、评估和验证提供信息，以传播这些新知识，同时完善该项目的研究结果。除了通过出版物和会议进行传播之外，这种传播方法还可以通过密切接触潜在采用者来使这些成果产生广泛影响，从而增加他们追求变革性服务学习的可能性。通过与国内外工程和服务学习教育者的大型网络合作，这些产品将用于促进工程服务倾向向有影响力的面向社区的方法的范式转变。该职业项目将创造关于 (a) SL 工程教育者的地位和假设如何阻碍和促进服务学习实践的新知识； (b) 批判性反思如何影响工程教育工作者采用引发变革性服务学习的方法； (c) 工程教育工作者如何开发服务学习课程，以实现边缘化社区社会正义和公平的变革性影响。总的来说，这些成果将促进具有公民意识的工程公民的发展，他们公平地与当地社区互动，并为解决复杂的社会挑战做好准备。该奖项反映了 NSF 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。