Research Initiation: The Influences of Engineering and Science Identities among Faculty in the Mentoring of Graduate Students

研究启动：教师工程和科学身份对研究生指导的影响

• 批准号: 2306239
• 负责人: David O'Neill
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-15 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2306239&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Research; Initiation; Influences; Engineering; Science

Each person has a complex identity shaped by various factors such as their gender, race, socio-economic status, and background. Additionally, the roles individuals hold, like that of research engineers who also serve as research scientists and engineers, contribute to their identity in differing amounts for different individuals. While previous research has shown the significance of a mentor's identity in mentor-mentee relationships, no specific studies have focused on the contributions of engineering and research identities to these relationships among research engineers. This research project aims to explore different aspects of identity in Engineering Research Mentors (ERMs), who in this study refer to engineering faculty at research universities. The project aims to understand how these aspects of identity influence the mentoring approaches adopted by ERMs. The ultimate goal is to enhance mentoring practices in academic engineering research settings, addressing issues such as PhD students failing to complete their degrees. Fully integrated in this project is the research initiation objective to train the Principal Investigator (PI) in mixed-methods research and support their first funded project in engineering education research. This will not only enable the PI to succeed in future studies but also lay the foundation for those studies that have already been conceptualized.The research goal of this project will be to understand how engineering research mentors approach mentor-mentee relationships differently based on the degree to which they identify as engineers and/or research scientists. The overall research question asked in this proposal is: How do the strengths of Engineering Identity (EI) and Research Science Identity (RSI) operationalize in Engineering Research Mentors’ relationships with mentees? To answer this question, we will quantify EI and RSI in engineering research mentors through a survey with explicit questions and an implicit association test, followed by in-depth qualitative interviews, with the following specific aims: 1) Obtain measurements of EI and RSI in ERMs and explore contributory factors, 2) Determine to what extent an ERM’s explicit and implicit measures of identity agree, and 3) Understand the operationalization of these identities in the ERM’s mentoring relationships. Through these aims, the study will seek to answer the following four research questions: RQ1: What is the distribution of explicit EI and explicit RSI of ERMs? RQ2: What is the distribution of implicit EI–RSI identity bias of ERMs? RQ3: What is the agreement between explicit and implicit measurements of EI–RSI identity bias? RQ4: How do identity and identity bias operationalize in ERMs’ mentor-mentee relationships? This work is original in that: data obtained from these steps will be the first ever measurements of EI and RSI in the understudied group of ERMs; this work will obtain the first implicit measurements of EI and RSI in any group of engineers; and these measurements will both guide qualitative interviews and provide meaningful context to the findings. Deeper understanding of how an ERM’s own professional identities affect her/his mentoring will create opportunities for improved mentorship and refined mentorship-training programs. Interventions to improve mentoring through program design and mentor development will benefit student recruitment, retention, and success, all of which will support efforts to 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.

每个人都有一个复杂的身份，由各种因素塑造，如性别，种族，社会经济地位和背景。此外，个人所扮演的角色，如研究工程师，他们也是研究科学家和工程师，对不同的人来说，对他们的身份有不同的贡献。虽然以前的研究表明，导师的身份在导师-学员关系的重要性，没有具体的研究集中在工程和研究的身份，这些研究工程师之间的关系的贡献。本研究旨在探讨不同方面的身份在工程研究导师（ERMs），谁在这项研究中是指工程教师在研究型大学。该项目的目的是了解身份的这些方面如何影响机构风险管理所采用的指导方法。最终目标是加强学术工程研究环境中的指导实践，解决博士生未能完成学位等问题。在这个项目中完全集成的是研究启动目标，以培训混合方法研究的主要研究者（PI），并支持他们在工程教育研究的第一个资助项目。这不仅可以使PI在未来的研究中取得成功，也为那些已经概念化的研究奠定了基础。本项目的研究目标是了解工程研究导师如何根据他们对工程师和/或研究科学家的认同程度以不同的方式处理导师-学员关系。本提案中提出的总体研究问题是：工程身份（EI）和研究科学身份（RSI）的优势如何在工程研究导师与学员的关系中发挥作用？为了回答这个问题，我们将通过一项带有明确问题和隐性关联测试的调查来量化工程研究导师的EI和RSI，然后进行深入的定性访谈，具体目标如下：1）获得ERM中EI和RSI的测量值，并探索促成因素，2）确定ERM的明确和隐含的身份测量值在多大程度上一致，以及3）理解这些身份在ERM指导关系中的可操作性。通过这些目标，本研究将试图回答以下四个研究问题：RQ 1：ERMs的外显EI和外显RSI分布如何？ERMs的内隐EI-RSI同一性偏差的分布情况如何？RQ 3：EI-RSI身份偏倚的外显和内隐测量之间的一致性如何？RQ 4：身份和身份偏见如何在ERM的导师与学员关系中发挥作用？ 这项工作是原始的，因为：从这些步骤中获得的数据将是有史以来第一次测量的EI和RSI的研究组的ERMs;这项工作将获得第一个隐式测量的EI和RSI的任何一组工程师;这些测量都将指导定性访谈，并提供有意义的背景下的调查结果。更深入地了解机构风险管理员自身的专业身份如何影响其指导，将为改进指导和完善指导培训方案创造机会。 通过项目设计和导师培养来改善导师指导的干预措施将有利于学生的招募、保留和成功，所有这些都将支持扩大工程参与的努力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。