CAREER: Using Equity Metrics and Reflective Engagement to Transform Engineering Classrooms Towards Racial Equity

在努力扩大种族少数群体（例如，黑人、拉丁裔、土著）学生参与工程、本科课堂公平是学生途径的一个至关重要的部分。虽然学生经常在日常工程课堂上经历边缘化，但一般来说，工程教授并没有在自己的课堂上积极参与种族平等的变革。这个职业项目将研究如何在多个机构环境中改变课堂不平等，并将吸取的经验教训纳入更广泛的教育计划和资源。该项目符合扩大参与工程计划的目标，以改变工程课堂文化，促进公平和包容，这将对黑人，拉丁裔和土著工程师的形成和专业化产生重大影响。该项目的研究计划将解决工程教育研究领域的关键限制。典型的DEI研究与教育实践脱节，不研究改变日常不平等的过程。该项目将模拟一种新的形式，扩大参与研究，这是嵌入在课堂实践中，以获得重新创造日常不平等的机制的基本理解。教育计划将把研究结果纳入教师的戏剧干预，以实践课堂参与，注意，解释和行动的方式，提高当地环境的公平。出版物，研究方法工具，并从该项目开发的促进指南将在一个网站平台上共享，称为公平，可用于教师，教师开发人员和教育研究人员谁专注于扩大参与工程。为了培养扩大项目积极社会影响的能力，PI将为那些希望在研究中关注公平和行动的早期职业研究人员举办夏季培训。该项目将借鉴文化生产理论，识别日常工程教室中种族不平等的复制机制，并将测试如何将这些设置转向公平结果。该项目将整合关键的人种学方法和教师参与创新的实证方法，利用公平指标作为重点，从事教师学习。研究团队将与教师教师合作，定义一个与课堂实践维度相关的公平指标，并与教师分享反馈，为教师创造一个反馈循环，以随着时间的推移改善课堂实践。公平性指标将包括三个主要原型：课堂话语的参与，讲座所需的背景知识水平，以及团队或合作伙伴的角色和参与。教师参与促进方法将强调位置性，反思性对话，以及课堂实践的迭代设计研究方法。该研究小组将嵌入一个学期在每个4大学的背景下，具有对比的人口和机构特征（包括西班牙裔服务，主要是白色，历史上的黑人，公共，私人，博士生大学和社区学院）。在一个跨机构的分析相结合的数据，从课堂观察和教师参与会议，研究小组将研究1）教师学习轨迹种族平等，2）战略和实践，提高课堂种族平等，和3）在机构和人口背景下的相似性和差异。该项目将促进努力联合收割机结合定性研究的细微差别的见解，定量指标的沟通重要性，与教师的直接参与，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进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

Within efforts to broaden racially minoritized (e.g., Black, Latinx, indigenous) students’ participation in engineering, equity in undergraduate classrooms is a critically important part of student pathways. Although students frequently experience marginalization in the everyday engineering classroom, in general, engineering professors are not engaging as active change agents for racial equity in their own classroom. This CAREER project will research ways to shift classroom inequities across multiple institutional contexts and will incorporate lessons learned into broader education programs and resources. The project aligns with a Broadening Participation in Engineering program goal to transform engineering classroom culture to promote equity and inclusion, which will have substantial impact on the formation and professionalization of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous engineers. This project’s research plan will address key limitations in the field of engineering education research. Typical DEI research is disconnected from educational practice and does not examine processes to change everyday inequities. This project will model a novel form of broadening participation research which is embedded in classroom practice to gain fundamental understandings of the mechanisms that recreate everyday inequities. The education plan will incorporate findings from the research study into a theater-based intervention for faculty, to practice classroom engagement that notices, interprets, and acts in ways that improve equity in the local setting. Publications, research methods tools, and facilitation guides developed from the project will be shared on a website platform called the Equity Toolbox that can be used by faculty, faculty developers, and education researchers who focus on broadening participation in engineering. To build capacity to broaden the project’s positive societal impact, the PI will host a summer training for early career researchers who want to center equity and action in their research.Drawing on the theory of cultural production, the project will discern mechanisms for the reproduction of racial inequity in everyday engineering classrooms and will test ways to shift these settings towards equitable outcomes. The project will integrate critical ethnographic methodology and faculty engagement in an innovative empirical approach utilizing an equity metric as a focal point to engage faculty learning. The research team will collaborate with faculty instructors to define an equity metric that relates to a dimension of the classroom practice and share feedback with the faculty, creating a feedback loop for the faculty to improve the classroom practice over time. Equity metrics will include three major prototypes: participation in classroom discourse, level of background knowledge required in lecture, and team or partner roles and participation. The faculty engagement facilitation approach will emphasize positionality, reflective dialogue, and an iterative design research approach to classroom practice. The research team will embed one semester in each of 4 university contexts that have contrasting demographic and institutional characteristics (including Hispanic Serving, Predominantly White, Historically Black, public, private, doctoral university, and community college). In a cross-institutional analysis combining data from classroom observations and faculty engagement sessions, the research team will study 1) faculty learning trajectories on racial equity, 2) strategies and practices that improve classroom racial equity, and 3) similarities and differences across institutional and demographic contexts. This project will catalyze efforts to combine the nuanced insights of qualitative research, the communicative importance of quantitative metrics, direct engagement with faculty, and built capacity with education researchers to lead the way towards a sea change for equity in engineering classrooms.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.