Research Initiation: Facilitating Professional Formation of Engineers through Strategic Agency of Engineering Faculty

专业协会是生态系统的重要组成部分，该生态系统通过塑造其学科的技术方向以及执业工程师对公共健康、安全和福利的道德责任等方式促进工程师的职业形成。在过去的十年中，这些专业学会与工程教育机构合作，强调需要将工程的社会影响与形成工程专业人员所需的技术经济基础并列。尽管做出了这些努力，但学术机构和专业学会之间的知识转移及其对本科生工程学形成的影响还没有得到很好的理解。此前的研究探讨了教师对工程专业的社会影响意味着什么，以及他们在工程课程中实施转型时遇到的挑战。然而，仍然需要发现工程学教师是如何制定战略的，以及他们在专业社会中的参与在这些行动中可以发挥的作用。这个项目将进行一项定性研究，以探索专业协会中的工程学教师在转变他们的教学实践以解决课堂上的社会影响时所起的战略作用。在数据驱动的领域，如工程学，叙述性探究研究方法提供了机会，将化学工程教师的经验放在最前列，并找到可与其他工程学科共享的基于证据的范例策略。这项纵向定性研究将使用战略机构(SA)框架来理解专业社会中的工程教师如何通过改变教学实践来成为变革的推动者，从而在工程师的形成过程中创造积极的社会变革。该框架的三个维度将涉及反思、战略和行动，随着时间的推移，个人参与由专业社会内多机构工程学教师组成的实践社区(COP)支持的活动。SA认为，没有反思，战略就不能制定，行动就不会发生。美国化学工程师学会(AIChE)之所以被选为专业学会所在地，是因为它对化学工程本科教育的既定承诺以及研究人员在该组织中的地位。本研究旨在回答SA模式指导下的以下多维研究问题：由化学工程教师组成的实践社区(即AIChE)中的思考、策略和行动如何随着时间的推移而变化，同时改变解决工程专业社会影响的教学实践？在这项定性研究中，第一阶段将重点放在定性方法的伦理验证上，以探索参与者在学习工程中的战略代理和社会影响时的叙述。在第二阶段，缔约方会议将在专业协会内成立，并将提供为期八个月的协助。一旦建立了COP作为本研究的背景，就将使用有目的和方便的抽样来寻找愿意分享他们的叙述的个人。在这项纵向研究中，访谈和期刊条目将被收集起来，并使用体内编码和集中编码相结合的方式进行编码。最后，在第三阶段，对数据和解释的最终修订将导致共同构建一种叙事，反映教师在转变课堂教学实践时的战略机构(在本公约中制定)。该项目的成果将促进工程教育界了解，在专业协会的支持下，实践社区如何能够影响愿意积极改变学生成为工程师的学生的战略代理。预计了解该框架如何解释社区支持在将个人培养为变革推动者方面的作用，可以帮助其他工程组织实施变革行动，因为这一奖项反映了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。

Professional societies are a crucial part of the ecosystem that fosters the professional formation of engineers by, among other things, shaping the technical direction of their disciplines and the ethical responsibility of practicing engineers towards public health, safety, and welfare. In the last decade, in partnership with engineering education institutions, these professional societies have emphasized the need to include the social implications of engineering in parallel to techno-economic fundamentals needed to form engineering professionals. Despite these efforts, the transfer of knowledge between academic institutions and professional societies, and its influence in undergraduate engineering formation, is not well understood. Prior studies have explored faculty stances on what social implications mean for the engineering profession and what challenges they have encountered in implementing transformations in the engineering curriculum. However, there is still a need to uncover how engineering faculty develop strategies and the role their involvement in professional societies can play in these actions. This project will conduct a qualitative study to explore the strategic agency of engineering faculty involved in professional societies as they transform their teaching practices to address social implications in their classrooms. In a data-driven field such as engineering, narrative inquiry research methods provide the opportunity to place the experiences of chemical engineering faculty at the forefront and find exemplar evidence-based strategies that can be shared with other engineering disciplines.This longitudinal qualitative study will use the Strategic Agency (SA) framework to understand how engineering faculty involved in professional societies can become change agents by transforming instructional practices that create a positive social change in the formation of engineers. The three dimensions of the framework will involve reflection, strategy, and action over time as individuals participate in activities supported by a community of practice (CoP) formed by multi-institutional engineering faculty within a professional society. SA suggests that without reflection, strategies cannot be developed, and actions cannot occur. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) was selected as the professional society site due to its established commitment to chemical engineering undergraduate education and the researcher's positionality within the organization. The study aims to answer the following multidimensional research question guided by the SA model: How do the reflections, strategies, and actions within a community of practice (i.e., AIChE) composed of chemical engineering faculty vary over time while changing instructional practices that address social implications in the engineering profession? In this qualitative study, Phase I will focus on the ethical validation of qualitative methods to explore participant narratives as they learn about strategic agency and social implications in engineering. In Phase II, the CoP will be formed within the professional society and facilitated for eight months. Once the CoP is formed as a setting for this study, purposeful and convenient sampling will be used to find individuals willing to share their narratives. In this longitudinal study, interviews and journal entries will be collected and coded using a combination of in-vivo and focused coding. Finally, in Phase III, final revisions of the data and interpretations will lead to co-constructing a narrative that reflects faculty strategic agency (developed in this CoP) as they transform their instructional practices in the classroom. The outcomes from this project will advance the engineering education community's knowledge of how communities of practice, supported by professional societies, can influence strategic agency among engineering faculty willing to positively change their students' formation as engineers. It is expected that understanding how this framework explains the role of community support in fostering individuals to become change agents can help other engineering organizations in implementing transformational actionsThis 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.