GSE/RES: Uncovering tacit knowledge about gender, communication and interpersonal interactions in engineering

智力优势：路易斯维尔大学正在开展一个项目，该项目的理论基础是，在工程学校和工作场所取得成功的女性已经发展出了关于如何在这种环境中成功互动的隐性知识（个人知道但通常无法明确表达的假设，习惯和策略）。该项目的目标是挖掘这种隐性知识，并将其展示出来，使其成为刚刚进入工程和类似男性主导领域的年轻妇女和女孩的资源。 该项目的第一阶段通过与大约100名主修工程的女本科生进行访谈和进行焦点小组讨论，确定了妇女在男性占主导地位的环境中可能面临的常见问题情景。第二阶段使用这些情况作为话语完成采访的基础上，约60名女性工程教师和专业人士，从一系列的背景。与大约20名男性专业人员的访谈将被用作对照人群。这些访谈将使一些工程沟通的隐性知识的特点识别。第三阶段将涉及约80名本科生的焦点小组，以仔细检查调查结果和结论是否产生共鸣。更广泛的影响：该项目将产生关于性别如何与男性文化（如工程）的话语和人际规范相互作用的新知识。它连接的研究经常被引用的障碍，妇女的坚持在工程（如自信，刻板印象的威胁，和学校的气氛）的研究工程通信，提供了一个新的透镜了解这些问题。最重要的是，该项目将确定妇女成功地用于导航甚至改变男性领域的具体战略，提供可以解决工程领域妇女“管道泄漏”问题的信息。

Intellectual Merit: The University of Louisville is undertaking a project based upon the theory that women who have been successful in engineering schools and workplaces have developed tacit knowledge (assumptions, habits, and strategies that individuals know but usually cannot articulate explicitly) about how to interact successfully in this environment. The goal of this project is to tap into this tacit knowledge and bring it to the surface where it can serve as a resource for young women and girls just entering engineering and similar male-dominated fields. Stage one of the project identifies common problem scenarios that women might face in male-dominated settings by interviewing and conducting focus groups with approximately 100 undergraduate women majoring in engineering. Stage two uses these situations as the basis for discourse completion interviews with approximately 60 female engineering faculty and professionals from a range of backgrounds. Interviews with approximately 20 male professionals will be used as a control population. These interviews will enable the identification of some features of tacit knowledge about communication in engineering. Stage three will involve focus groups of about 80 undergraduate students to double-check whether the findings and conclusions resonate. Broader Impacts: This project will produce new knowledge about how gender interacts with the discourse and interpersonal norms of masculine cultures such as engineering. It connects research on frequently cited barriers to women's persistence in engineering (such as self-confidence, stereotype threat, and school climate) to research on engineering communication, providing a new lens for understanding these issues. Most importantly, this project will identify specific strategies that women have successfully used to navigate and even change masculine fields, providing information that can address the problem of the "leaky pipeline" of women in engineering.