CAREER: Using Equity Metrics and Reflective Engagement to Transform Engineering Classrooms Towards Racial Equity

在努力扩大少数种族（如黑人、拉丁裔、土著）学生参与工程的过程中，本科课堂的公平是学生道路的一个至关重要的组成部分。尽管学生们在日常的工程课堂上经常经历边缘化，但总的来说，工程教授们并没有在他们自己的课堂上积极参与种族平等的变革。该职业项目将研究如何在多种制度背景下改变课堂不平等现象，并将吸取的经验教训纳入更广泛的教育计划和资源中。该项目符合“扩大工程参与”计划的目标，即改变工程课堂文化，促进公平和包容，这将对黑人、拉丁裔和土著工程师的形成和专业化产生重大影响。该项目的研究计划将解决工程教育研究领域的关键限制。典型的DEI研究与教育实践脱节，不考察改变日常不平等的过程。该项目将建立一种新型的扩大参与研究模式，将其嵌入课堂实践中，以获得对再现日常不平等的机制的基本理解。该教育计划将把研究结果纳入教师的戏剧干预中，以实践课堂参与，以提高当地环境中的公平性的方式进行注意、解释和行动。该项目开发的出版物、研究方法工具和促进指南将在一个名为“公平工具箱”的网站平台上共享，供致力于扩大工程参与的教师、教师开发人员和教育研究人员使用。为了建立扩大该项目积极社会影响的能力，PI将为希望在其研究中以公平和行动为中心的早期职业研究人员举办夏季培训。利用文化生产理论，该项目将识别日常工程教室中种族不平等再现的机制，并将测试将这些设置转变为公平结果的方法。该项目将整合关键的人种学方法和教师参与，采用创新的实证方法，利用公平指标作为重点，吸引教师学习。研究团队将与教师教师合作，定义一个与课堂实践维度相关的公平指标，并与教师分享反馈，为教师创建一个反馈循环，以随着时间的推移改进课堂实践。公平指标将包括三个主要的原型：课堂话语的参与，讲座所需的背景知识水平，团队或合作伙伴的角色和参与。教师参与促进方法将强调位置性、反思性对话和课堂实践的迭代设计研究方法。研究小组将在4所大学背景中各嵌入一个学期，这些大学背景具有鲜明的人口和制度特征（包括西班牙裔服务，以白人为主，历史上的黑人，公立，私立，博士大学和社区学院）。在结合课堂观察和教师参与会议数据的跨机构分析中，研究团队将研究1)教师在种族平等方面的学习轨迹，2)改善课堂种族平等的策略和实践，以及3)跨机构和人口背景的异同。该项目将促进将定性研究的细微见解、定量指标的交流重要性、与教师的直接接触以及与教育研究人员的能力建设结合起来的努力，以引领工程教室公平的巨大变化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Within efforts to broaden racially minoritized (e.g., Black, Latinx, indigenous) students’ participation in engineering, equity in undergraduate classrooms is a critically important part of student pathways. Although students frequently experience marginalization in the everyday engineering classroom, in general, engineering professors are not engaging as active change agents for racial equity in their own classroom. This CAREER project will research ways to shift classroom inequities across multiple institutional contexts and will incorporate lessons learned into broader education programs and resources. The project aligns with a Broadening Participation in Engineering program goal to transform engineering classroom culture to promote equity and inclusion, which will have substantial impact on the formation and professionalization of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous engineers. This project’s research plan will address key limitations in the field of engineering education research. Typical DEI research is disconnected from educational practice and does not examine processes to change everyday inequities. This project will model a novel form of broadening participation research which is embedded in classroom practice to gain fundamental understandings of the mechanisms that recreate everyday inequities. The education plan will incorporate findings from the research study into a theater-based intervention for faculty, to practice classroom engagement that notices, interprets, and acts in ways that improve equity in the local setting. Publications, research methods tools, and facilitation guides developed from the project will be shared on a website platform called the Equity Toolbox that can be used by faculty, faculty developers, and education researchers who focus on broadening participation in engineering. To build capacity to broaden the project’s positive societal impact, the PI will host a summer training for early career researchers who want to center equity and action in their research.Drawing on the theory of cultural production, the project will discern mechanisms for the reproduction of racial inequity in everyday engineering classrooms and will test ways to shift these settings towards equitable outcomes. The project will integrate critical ethnographic methodology and faculty engagement in an innovative empirical approach utilizing an equity metric as a focal point to engage faculty learning. The research team will collaborate with faculty instructors to define an equity metric that relates to a dimension of the classroom practice and share feedback with the faculty, creating a feedback loop for the faculty to improve the classroom practice over time. Equity metrics will include three major prototypes: participation in classroom discourse, level of background knowledge required in lecture, and team or partner roles and participation. The faculty engagement facilitation approach will emphasize positionality, reflective dialogue, and an iterative design research approach to classroom practice. The research team will embed one semester in each of 4 university contexts that have contrasting demographic and institutional characteristics (including Hispanic Serving, Predominantly White, Historically Black, public, private, doctoral university, and community college). In a cross-institutional analysis combining data from classroom observations and faculty engagement sessions, the research team will study 1) faculty learning trajectories on racial equity, 2) strategies and practices that improve classroom racial equity, and 3) similarities and differences across institutional and demographic contexts. This project will catalyze efforts to combine the nuanced insights of qualitative research, the communicative importance of quantitative metrics, direct engagement with faculty, and built capacity with education researchers to lead the way towards a sea change for equity in engineering classrooms.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.