Early-Concept Exploratory Research on the Professional Formation of Engineers' Conceptions of the Public

工程师与他们的最终客户--通常是看不见的公众--之间的关系，是工程专业身份和使命的核心。今天，美国200多万执业工程师经常在公众想象而不是参与的关系真空中做出复杂和关键的决定，对公众的健康、安全和福利产生重大影响。假设不同的公众概念强化了不同的职业意识形态、身份和实践形式，本研究试图检查工程师如何看待他们与公众的关系，这些观点形成了哪些正式和非正式的机制，以及现有的概念是如何在与不同公众的互动中表达的。这项工作是更深入地洞察工程师对公众的概念所产生的信念结构如何增强或削弱工程实践，以及最终它们如何支持或削弱该专业促进社会公益的抱负的第一步。结果将提供一个基础，工程教育和整个工程专业可以转变为包括重新想象的公众观点，使公众可见，强调他们的声音在技术和道德上的相关性，并赋予他们在工程企业中明确的角色。推而广之，这项研究将可能修正对工程师在社会中的角色的理解。这项研究的驱动因素是这样一种假设，即工程教育促进了工程师与他们所服务的公众之间的距离，并损害了他们以当地合意和社会公正的方式促进社会公益的能力。拟议的研究通过单一的案例研究方法，开始研究工程师对公众的概念--这些概念是什么，它们是如何形成的，以及它们在边界工作期间如何在与不同公众的互动中表达出来。研究设计包括以下数据来源：1)围绕工程师与社会的关系构建职业话语的官方工程学文件，2)对工程学学生、教师和实践专业人员的采访，以及3)对与工程师有广泛经验(积极和/或消极)的动员公众的采访。分析将涉及两种定性研究技术，以确定流行的工程概念，并将在数据三角测量中达到高潮，以确定工程师如何看待公众和不同公众如何看待自己之间的汇合点和分歧点。这项工作是探索性的，旨在加深对工程师对公众概念的理解。目标是建立一个基础，在这个基础上，可以探索、开发和实施促进工程师和社会之间相互熏陶的合作的教育干预措施。

The relationship between engineers and their ultimate client, the often-invisible public, lies at the heart of the engineering profession's identity and mission. Today, the over 2 million practicing engineers in the US routinely make complex and critical decisions with significant implications for the public's health, safety, and welfare in a relational vacuum, where publics are imagined rather than engaged with. Postulating that different conceptions of the public reinforce different professional ideologies, identities, and forms of practice, this research seeks to examine how engineers see their relationship to the public, what formal and informal mechanisms form those views, and how existing conceptions are expressed in interactions with diverse publics. This work constitutes a first step toward deeper insight into how the belief structures created by engineers' conceptions of the public enhance or weaken engineering practice and, ultimately, how they support or undermine the profession's aspiration to promote the social good. Results will provide a basis from which engineering education and the engineering profession at large could shift to include a reimagined view of the public that renders publics visible, underscores the technical and moral relevance of their voices, and gives them a well-defined role in the engineering enterprise. By extension, this research will make possible a revised understanding of engineers' role in society.This research is driven by the hypothesis that engineering education promotes conceptions that distance engineers from the publics they serve and compromise their ability to promote the social good in locally desirable and socially just ways. The proposed study initiates research in engineers' conceptions of the public - what these conceptions are, how they form, and how they are expressed in interactions with diverse publics during boundary work - through a single case study methodology. The research design includes the following data sources: 1) official engineering documents that frame the profession's discourse around engineers' relationship with society, 2) interviews with engineering students, faculty, and practicing professionals, and 3) interviews with members of mobilized publics who have extensive experience - positive and/or negative - interacting with engineers. The analysis will involve two qualitative research techniques to identify prevalent engineering conceptions, and will culminate in data triangulation to determine points of convergence and divergence between how engineers view the public and how members of diverse publics view themselves. This work is exploratory, aiming to build a deeper understanding about engineers' conceptions of the public. The goal is to set a foundation from which educational interventions that foster mutually edifying collaborations between engineers and society can be explored, developed, and implemented.