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

研究启动：了解一年级和二年级工科学生的情感与认同之间的相互作用

• 批准号: 2204726
• 负责人: Emma Treadway
• 金额: $ 17.82万
• 依托单位: Trinity University
• 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: 2022-08-01 至 2024-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2204726&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Research; Initiation; Understanding; Interactions; Between

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.

工程项目和职业的保留是工程教育长期关注的问题，特别是在历史上代表性不足的人群中。众所周知，学生的工程身份发展，或作为一名工程师的自我意识，在他们决定坚持所学专业的过程中起着重要作用。虽然工程身份的发展已经从许多角度进行了探索，但学生对该学科的感受/情绪、价值观、态度和信仰的影响尚未得到解决。本研究旨在了解学生对学习工程、科学和数学的感受，以及他们对这些学科的价值观、态度和信仰，如何与学生的工程身份发展相互作用。该项目将跟踪参与者作为工科本科生的前两年，这是学生决定是否坚持工程的关键时期。这项工作将提高对学生对他们在数学、科学和工程课程中的经历的感受如何有助于形成他们的工程身份的理解，这反过来又有助于他们决定追求或离开工程。因为学生的其他身份塑造了他们的情感体验和他们的工程身份的发展，我们将在学生的其他社会身份的背景下研究工程身份和情感之间的关系。除了塑造指导实践来帮助所有学生体验积极的身份建立情感体验外，这项工作还可以支持女性和代表性不足的少数民族参与和保留工程，支持NSF项目的目标，即让所有人都能参与工程。现有的情感和工程认同模型分别表明，局部情感（学生在学科活动中体验到的不断变化的情绪）和全局情感（学生对学科持有的广泛态度、价值观和信念）可能有可能影响工程认同并与之相互作用，进而影响保留；然而，这些联系还没有被探索过。这项工作将建立在数学和科学教育中关于情感的学科文献，以及工程身份发展的理论基础上，以便为科学、数学和工程相关的情感如何促进学生的工程身份的理论做出贡献。来自三一大学（Trinity University）和布法罗大学（University at Buffalo）的研究人员采用一种混合方法的纵向方法，对学生在工程项目的头两年进行跟踪调查，试图回答三个研究问题：RQ1：一年级和二年级工程专业学生在从事工程工作与数学和科学工作时，他们的本地影响是如何不同或相同的？RQ2：在他们大学早期学习数学、科学和工程的过程中，学生对这些学科的整体影响是如何变化的？RQ3：学生对数学、科学和工程的本地和全球影响如何影响他们的身份，包括工程身份？研究小组将在他们前四个学期的每一个学期采访和调查工程专业的学生，以了解这些学生的影响和身份。该研究将提供一系列基于访谈的案例研究，从中我们将开发一个情感和工程身份之间相互作用的模型，该模型还考虑了一系列其他学生身份对形成这些相互作用的影响。此外，本研究还将开发新的测量工程影响的仪器。这些工具、模型和案例研究将为改进保留和扩大工程参与的努力提供信息。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。

项目成果

Open-ended Modeling Problems and Engineering Identity

开放式建模问题和工程同一性

• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: ASEE annual conference proceedings
• 作者: Swenson, J.;Treadway, E.;Lape, S.;Casson, A.
• 通讯作者: Casson, A.

Assessment of a Survey Instrument for Measuring Affective Pathways

用于测量情感路径的调查工具的评估

• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: ASEE annual conference proceedings
• 作者: Treadway, Emma;Tubbs, Kailey;Caserto, Melissa J.;Lee, Michelle;Swenson, Jessica E.
• 通讯作者: Swenson, Jessica E.