Research Initiation: Understanding Interactions Between Affect and Identity in First- and Second-Year Engineering Students

工程项目和职业的保留是工程教育的一个长期关注的问题，特别是在历史上代表性不足的人群中。学生的工程身份的发展，或自己作为一个工程师的感觉，是众所周知的，在他们决定坚持在主要发挥重要作用。虽然工程身份的发展已经从许多角度进行了探索，但学生的感受/情感，价值观，态度，对该主题的信念的影响尚未得到解决。本研究旨在了解学生的感受与学习工程，科学和数学，以及他们的价值观，态度和信念对这些科目，互动与学生的发展，他们的工程身份。该项目将跟踪参与者作为本科工程专业学生的前两年，这是学生决定是否坚持工程的关键时期。这项工作将提高学生的感受如何理解他们的经验，在数学，科学和工程课程有助于他们的工程身份的形成，这反过来又有助于他们决定追求或离开工程。由于学生的其他身份塑造他们的情感体验和他们的工程身份的发展，我们将研究工程身份和学生的其他社会身份的背景下影响之间的关系。除了塑造教师的做法，以帮助所有学生体验积极的身份建设情感经验，这项工作因此可以支持参与和保留妇女和代表性不足的少数民族在工程，支持这个NSF计划的目标，使所有人都能参与到工程中来。现有的影响模型和工程身份分别表明，（学生在学科活动中经历的不断变化的情绪）和全球影响（学生对学科的广泛态度，价值观和信念）可能有可能影响工程身份并与之互动，进而影响保留;然而，这些联系尚未被探索。这项工作将建立在数学和科学教育的学科文献的影响，以及工程身份发展的理论，以有助于理论如何影响科学，数学和工程有助于学生的工程身份。使用混合方法的纵向方法，跟随学生在他们的头两年在工程项目，研究人员从Trinity大学和布法罗大学寻求回答三个研究问题：RQ 1：如何是第一和第二年的工程专业学生的本地影响不同或相同，而做工程工作与数学和科学工作？第二个问题：在他们早期的数学、科学和工程的大学经历中，学生的全球性如何影响这些学科的变化？第三个问题：学生对数学、科学和工程的本地和全球影响如何有助于他们的身份，包括工程身份？ 研究小组将在前四个学期的每个学期采访和调查工科学生，以了解这些学生的影响和身份。这项研究将有助于一组基于访谈的案例研究，从这些案例中，我们将开发一个模型的影响和工程身份之间的相互作用，也考虑了一系列其他学生的身份塑造这些相互作用的影响。此外，这项研究将开发新的工具来测量工程影响。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。

Retention in engineering programs and careers is a longstanding concern in engineering education, particularly among historically underrepresented populations. Students’ development of their engineering identity, or the sense of themselves as being an engineer, is known to play an important role in their decision to persist within the major. While the development of engineering identity has been explored from many perspectives, the influences of students’ feelings/emotions, values, attitudes, beliefs about the subject have not been addressed. This research seeks to understand how students’ feelings associated with learning engineering, science, and mathematics as well as their values, attitudes, and beliefs about those subjects, interact with students’ development of their engineering identity. This project will follow participants through their first two years as undergraduate engineering students, which is a critical time during which students decide whether to persist in engineering. This work will improve understanding of how students’ feelings about their experiences in mathematics, science, and engineering courses contribute to the formation of their engineering identities, which in turn contributes to their decision to pursue or leave engineering. Because students’ other identities shape both their affective experiences and the development of their engineering identity, we will examine the relationships between engineering identity and affect within the context of students’ other social identities. In addition to shaping instructor practices to help all students experience positive identity-building affective experiences, this work could therefore support participation and retention of women and underrepresented minorities in engineering, supporting this NSF program’s goal of making participation in engineering open and accessible to all.Existing models of affect and engineering identity separately suggest that local affect (the changing emotions that students experience during disciplinary activity) and global affect (the broad attitudes, values, and beliefs that students hold about a discipline) may have potential to influence and interact with engineering identity, and in turn, to influence retention; however, these links have not been explored. This work will build on disciplinary literature in mathematics and science education about affect, as well as theories on engineering identity development, in order to contribute to a theory of how affect pertaining to science, mathematics, and engineering contributes to students’ engineering identity. Using a mixed-methods longitudinal approach that follows students across their first two years in an engineering program, researchers from Trinity University and the University at Buffalo seek to answer three research questions: RQ1: How are first- and second-year engineering students’ local affect different or the same while doing engineering work vs. mathematics and science work? RQ2: Over the course of their early college experiences with mathematics, science, and engineering, how do students’ global affect about these disciplines change? RQ3: How do students’ local and global affect about mathematics, science, and engineering contribute to/interact with their identities, including engineering identity? The research team will interview and survey engineering students in each of their first four semesters to understand these students’ affects and identities. The study will contribute a set of case studies based on the interviews, from which we will develop a model of the interactions between affect and engineering identity which also considers the influence of a range of other student identities on shaping those interactions. Additionally, the study will develop new instruments for measuring engineering affect. The instruments, model, and case studies will inform efforts to improve retention and broaden participation in engineering.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.