EAGER: Investigating and Pinpointing the College Success Factors for First-Generation, Underrepresented College Students in Engineering

家庭中第一代上大学的学生越来越成为教育研究和改革的焦点，这些研究和改革旨在扩大代表性不足的学生在高等教育中的参与度，特别是工程教育。虽然越来越多的研究开始阐明这些大学生面临的挑战，但这个研究项目试图通过两个关键的干预来开辟新的领域。首先，研究人员将运用交叉视角来理解构成一个人身份的多个维度是如何交叉的（例如，社会经济阶层、性别、种族、民族、残疾、父母身份、移民身份、农村与城市K-12学校教育等），以及这种交叉如何对各种高等教育机构类型的第一代工程专业学生的成功产生积极影响。其次，研究人员将采用能力方法来研究哪种机会和策略最适合特定类型的第一代学生，而不是只关注他们的缺陷和/或将他们视为一个无差别的群体。有了这种细致入微的理解，将为更有效、更有针对性和潜在的变革性教育改革提供基础，以扩大来自多种背景的第一代工程学生的参与。通过更清晰地识别导致这些学生成功的因素，该研究项目有可能激发入学决策、教学、咨询和指导实践方面的教育变革，这些变革都有可能扩大第一代工程专业学生的参与，特别是在女性和工程领域代表性不足的群体中。调查人员将利用一项针对低收入第一代学生的试点人种学研究的结果，以及来自越来越多的关于第一代学生的理论和科学文献的见解，开展一项调查，该调查将提供给来自美国各地的学生和校友。这将允许对第一代学生的工程经验进行交叉分析，以及有助于他们坚持不懈并成功进入就业市场和/或研究生院的具体变量。这个项目解决了现有的关于第一代学生的理论和科学研究的两个主要局限。首先，该项目将提供第一代学生的组内和组间比较，以更细致地了解多种因素如何影响他们成功完成工程学位并向工程劳动力过渡。作为对第一代工程专业学生经历的第一次大规模交叉分析，该项目将为这个不均衡地考虑代际地位、社会经济阶层、种族/民族和性别的领域增加分析清晰度。它还将扩大传统的人口统计类别，包括那些在初步民族志研究中对学生很重要的类别，如父母或移民身份，从而扩大文献基础。其次，该研究将确定学生在工程课程中应用他们的“知识基金”（例如，通过他们的家庭和工作经验发展起来的）的机会是否以及如何影响他们的本科成功和毕业过渡。该项目的研究结果将通过教师和顾问传播给参与机构、广大工程教育工作者以及未来的第一代学生。

Students who are the first-generation in their family to attend college are increasingly the spotlight of educational research and reform seeking to broaden the participation of underrepresented students in higher education in general and engineering in particular. While growing research begins to illuminate the challenges these college students face, this research project attempts to break new grounds by making two key interventions. First, the investigators will apply an intersectional lens to understanding how the multiple dimensions that make a person's identity intersect (e.g., socioeconomic class, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, parental status, immigrant status, and rural vs. urban K-12 schooling, etc.) and how this intersection may positively influence the success of first-generation engineering students at various higher education institutional-types. Second, the investigators will take a capabilities approach to study what kinds of opportunities and strategies best support particular kinds of first-generation students, rather than focusing exclusively on their deficiencies and/or treating them as an undifferentiated group. Having this nuanced understanding will provide the foundation for more effective, targeted, and potentially transformative educational reforms to broaden the participation of first-generation students from multiple backgrounds in engineering. By more clearly identifying the factors leading to the success of such students, this research project has the potential to inspire educational transformations in admission decision-making, teaching, advising, and mentoring practices that are all likely to broadening the participation of first-generation students in engineering, especially among women and underrepresented groups in engineering. The investigators will use findings from a pilot ethnographic research on low-income, first-generation students and insights from the growing theoretical and scientific literature on first-generation students to develop a survey that will be given to students and alumni from across the U.S.. This will allow for an intersectional analysis of first-generation students' engineering experiences and the specific variables that contribute to their perseverance and successful entries into the job market and/or graduate school. This project addresses two major limitations of the existing theoretical and scientific research on first-generation students. First, the project will provide between- and within-group comparisons of first-generation students to obtain more nuanced understanding of how multiple factors influence their success in completing engineering degrees and transitioning to the engineering workforce. As the first large-scale intersectional analysis of first-generation student experiences in engineering, the project will add analytic clarity to a field that unevenly considers generational status along with socioeconomic class, race/ethnicity, and gender. It will also advance the literature base by expanding the traditional demographic categories to include those that were salient for students in the preliminary ethnographic research, such as parental or immigrant status. Second, the research will identify if and how opportunities for students to apply their "funds of knowledge" (e.g., developed through their family and work experiences) inside of the engineering curriculum shapes their undergraduate success and graduation transitions. The project's findings will be disseminated to participating institutions, engineering educators at-large, and future generations of first-generation students through faculty and advisors.