Collaborative Research: Research: An exploration of how faculty mentoring influences doctoral student psychological safety and the impact on work-related outcomes

有必要更好地了解工程系如何培养更具包容性，心理安全的环境，使博士生感到安全从事人际冒险，特别是在研究环境中。心理安全的环境的特征是，人们可以安全地表达想法和担忧，愿意寻求反馈，对彼此有积极的意图，进行建设性的对抗，并感到安全地承担风险和实验，所有这些都是固有的危险人际行为。在学术研究环境中，教师在研究小组内培养心理安全环境方面发挥着重要的领导作用。虽然工程学院拥有强大的研究技能，但他们往往很少接受有关如何有效地为研究生提供心理社会支持以及如何创造积极的团队氛围的培训。文献表明，女性和其他代表性不足的群体仍然经常在STEM中遇到“冷冰冰的”的学术气候，或缺乏归属感，导致负面结果，如增加心理压力和/或对智力冒险的恐惧，这对学习，创造力和创新至关重要。这些结果阻碍了研究生履行学术责任的能力，可能会阻止他们继续攻读学位课程，并导致日益严重的心理健康危机已经困扰着研究生教育。这项研究将进一步加深我们对学术研究环境中心理安全的理解，并为如何培养包容性，心理安全的研究环境，支持广泛的工作成果提供实用策略和干预措施的发展。确定有效的方法来建立研究生教育环境中的心理安全可以导致增加学生的学习和性能，这将支持工程师的专业形成和创新工程研究的生产。改善指导关系和研究氛围也将支持研究生的福祉，保留和扩大参与。因此，本研究的总体目的是进一步了解工程研究生研究环境中的心理安全，并制定积极的解决方案，可以进一步促进博士生在他们的研究小组和指导关系中的心理安全。在工业环境中的大量研究证据表明，心理安全支持个人/团体学习，绩效和创新，并减轻与工作有关的压力。然而，没有研究已经进行了研究心理安全在研究实验室的影响，也没有它是如何有效地开发教师。拟议的研究利用了解释性的混合方法设计加上纵向访谈。解释性混合方法设计将利用调查，其次是两组访谈，以研究教师指导的作用，在研究小组和相关的工作成果，如学习和心理健康的博士生的心理安全。该调查将首先描述教师顾问指导，博士生心理安全，以及随后的积极和消极的工作相关结果之间的关系，以及这些对于来自不同人口背景的学生有何不同。第一组访谈将探讨调查所确定的关系（解释性设计）。纵向访谈将记录即将加入研究小组的博士生的经验，以及教师顾问如何传达影响研究小组成员心理安全的政策，规范和价值观。该研究的结果将被用于开发教育资源，包括为支持研究小组心理安全的教师顾问提供的以圣地亚哥为基础的培训讲习班，以及为研究生提供的学习心理安全的教育模块。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。

There is a need to better understand how engineering departments can cultivate more inclusive, psychologically safe environments in which doctoral students feel safe to engage in interpersonal risk-taking, especially in research settings. A psychologically safe environment is characterized by people who feel safe to voice ideas and concerns, willingly seek feedback, have positive intentions to one another, engage in constructive confrontation, and feel safe to take risks and experiment, all of which are inherently risky interpersonal behaviors. In academic research environments, faculty have a major leadership role in cultivating a psychologically safe environment within research groups. While engineering faculty possess strong research skills, they often receive minimal to no training on how to effectively provide psychosocial support to graduate students and how to create a positive team climate. The literature suggests women and other underrepresented groups still frequently encounter “chilly” academic climates in STEM, or experience a lack of sense of belonging, leading to negative outcomes such as increased psychological distress and/or a fear of intellectual risk-taking that is essential to learning, creativity, and innovation. These outcomes hamper graduate students’ ability to fulfill their academic responsibilities, may dissuade them from continuing with their degree program, and contribute to a growing mental health crisis that is already plaguing graduate education. This study will further our understanding of psychological safety in academic research settings and inform the development of pragmatic strategies and interventions on how to cultivate inclusive, psychologically-safe research climates that support a wide-range of work outcomes. Identifying effective approaches to establishing psychological safety in graduate education contexts can lead to increased student learning and performance, which will support the professional formation of engineers and the production of innovative engineering research. Improved mentoring relationships and research climates will also support graduate student wellbeing, retention, and broadening participation. The overarching purpose of this study is thus to further our understanding of psychological safety in engineering graduate research settings and develop proactive solutions that can further promote doctoral students’ psychological safety in their research groups and mentoring relationship. Considerable research evidence in industry settings suggests psychological safety supports individual/group learning, performance, and innovation, and mitigates work-related stress. Yet there is no research that has been conducted to study the impact of psychological safety in research labs, nor how it is effectively developed by faculty. The proposed study leverages an explanatory mixed methods design coupled with longitudinal interviews. The explanatory mixed methods design will utilize surveys followed by two sets of interviews to examine the role of faculty mentorship in psychological safety of doctoral students in research groups and associated work outcomes such as learning and mental health. The survey will first characterize relationships between faculty advisor mentoring, doctoral student psychological safety, and subsequent positive and negative work-related outcomes and how these differ for students from different demographic backgrounds. The first set of interviews will explore the relationships identified by the surveys (explanatory design). The longitudinal interviews will document the experience of incoming doctoral students who join a research group and how faculty advisors communicate policies, norms, and values that impact the psychological safety of research group members. The results of this research will be leveraged to develop educational resources, including scenario-based training workshops for faculty advisors to support research group psychological safety and an educational module for graduate students to learn about psychological safety.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.