Collaborative Research: Planning: Track 1 for Catalyzing a Paradigm Shift towards an Inclusive Engineering for Community Development

这笔规划赠款将有助于制定竞争性和协作性的工程股权中心(CEE)第一阶段项目提案。该中心的提议旨在促进社区发展工程(ECD)的研究和实践，该工程为所有学生，特别是有色人种学生提供变革性体验。通过在选定的伙伴机构之间建立一个分散的中心，我们正在寻求在幼儿发展中启动和维持向包容性教学原则的转变。这种转变将消除传统的幼儿保育和发展的局限性，因为传统的幼儿保育往往会排斥群体，强化陈规陋习，让伙伴社区需要更多。替换为包容性ECD可以专门为有色人种的学生、他们的资产和他们的需求提供服务，同时积极影响合作伙伴社区，以加强扩大工程参与的努力。在进行这项研究时，我们将了解如何克服服务学习对所有学生进行公平教育的能力的局限性。更具体地说，如果服务性学习要支持来自不同背景的学生的教育，那么我们必须针对这些不同背景的学生的具体需求来研究ECD。这项工作将通过促进包容所有人的ECD来影响学生、社区合作伙伴和高等教育机构，其中来自历史上人口结构微区化的学生将通过鼓励他们留在工程学并取得成功的转型经历得到支持。通过加强和创建广泛的包容性和与文化相关的幼儿发展方法、背景和数据收集方法，中心开展的研究将使整个研究-实践周期的努力成为可能，系统地将历史上被边缘化的学生和社区纳入幼儿发展倡议。为了实现这一目标并最大限度地增加获得资助的提案的机会，规划提案将实现以下主要目标：通过定期虚拟会议调整核心团队；阐明研究的核心概念；开发初始Delphi提示；计划和执行Delphi方法的发现阶段；举办为期两天的密集研讨会；以及使用Delphi前两个阶段的信息编写和完善提案。这一努力将产生关于什么是包容性幼儿发展以及如何在实践中实现这一目标的新知识。通过支持包容性和文化相关性的ECD实践，将支持来自历史上人口结构微型化的学生在ECD倡议中获得变革成果，进而增加在工程领域保持并取得成功的可能性。最终，正如白宫科学和技术政策办公室所推动的那样，联邦资助的研究将在未来努力纳入社区知识和兴趣，从开始(产生研究问题)到结束(研究成果)(国家科学院，2022年)。因此，将社区纳入ECD提供的研究和设计将对整个STEM(科学、技术、工程和数学)教育提出挑战，以培养一支能够与当地社区有效互动和共同发展的学生队伍，并具有足够的多样性，以同情种族、民族和社会经济多元化社区的现实和挑战。通过发展和探索包容性和文化相关性的幼儿发展教育背景，这笔规划赠款以及全额赠款能够利用幼儿发展问题领域和背景，关键地涉及边缘化和社会正义问题，以促进工程学教育中多样化和公平的幼儿发展参与。总的来说，这些影响将加强工程机构作为扩大参与的载体的能力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This planning grant will enable the development of a competitive and collaborative Centers for Equity in Engineering (CEE) Phase I project proposal. The Center proposal seeks to enable the research and practice of an Engineering for Community Development (ECD) that provides transformational experiences to all students, especially students of color. Through creating a distributed center across selected partner institutions, we are seeking to initiate and sustain a shift within ECD towards the principles of inclusive pedagogy. Such a shift will eliminate the limitations of traditional ECD, which can often exclude groups of peoples, reinforce stereotypes, and leave partner communities wanting more. Replacement with an inclusive ECD can specifically provide for students of color, their assets, and their needs while positively impacting partner communities to strengthen efforts of broadening participation in engineering. In conducting this research, we will understand the ways in which the limitations of service-learning’s ability to equitably educate all students can be overcome. More specifically, if service-learning is going to support the education of students from minoritized backgrounds, then we must research ECD with respect to the specific needs of students from these various backgrounds. This work will impact students, community partners, and institutions of higher education through promoting ECD that is inclusive to all, where students from historically minoritized demographics will be supported through transformational experiences that encourage them to remain and succeed in engineering. Through strengthening and creating a broad array of inclusive and culturally relevant ECD approaches, contexts, and data collection methods the research performed by the Center will enable effort across the research-to-practice cycle that systematically includes historically marginalized students and communities into ECDinitiatives. To accomplish this goal and maximize the chances of a funded proposal, the following primary objectives will be met within the planning proposal: Align core team through regular virtual meetings; Articulate core concept of research; Develop initial Delphi prompts; Plan and perform discovery phases of a Delphi method; Conduct an intensive two day workshop; And write and refine proposal using information from first two phases of Delphi. This effort will produce new knowledge on what an inclusive ECD is and how it can be accomplished in practice. Through supporting inclusive and culturally relevant ECD practice, students from historically minoritized demographics will be supported to obtain transformational outcomes within ECD initiatives and by extension increase the likelihood to remain and succeed in engineering. Ultimately, as promoted by the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House, federally funded research will, moving forward, try to include community knowledge and interest from its inception (generating research questions) to its conclusion (research deliverables) (National Academies, 2022). Hence, this inclusion of communities in research and design that ECD offers will challenge STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education at large to develop a student workforce capable of effectively interacting and co-developing with local communities and being diverse enough to empathize with the realities and challenges of racially, ethnically, and socio-economically diverse communities. Through developing and exploring inclusive and culturally relevant ECD contexts, this planning grant, and in turn, the full grant, can enable the use of ECD problem domains and contexts that critically engage issues of marginalization and social justice to promote diverse and equitable ECD participation within engineering education. Collectively, these impacts will strengthen engineering institutions’ ability to serve as vehicles for broadening participation.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.