Collaborative Research: Research Initiation: Writing Education Initiating Identity Transformation in Engineering Students-The Wri2tes Project

合作研究：研究启动：写作教育启动工科学生身份转变-Wri2tes项目

• 批准号: 1927035
• 负责人: Royce Francis
• 金额: $ 18.08万
• 依托单位: George Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-08-01 至 2023-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1927035&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Initiation; Writing; Education; Collaborative; Research; Initiation; Writing; Education

This project seeks to better prepare engineers for professional work by understanding how experiences of learning to write in school help develop students' capacities for engineering judgement and their identities as responsible professionals. The engineering disciplines are rigorous in their application of scientific principles, and these principles are directly addressed in undergraduate engineering classrooms. However, engineers are also called to make decisions that implicitly account for complex criteria, including the welfare of those who use or are impacted by the systems they design and the economic needs of their employers. As a result, in many ways engineering is an art that requires practitioners to routinely navigate difficult tradeoffs that require professional judgments. These judgments include often-conflicting economic, ethical, social, and value-based dimensions, requiring engineers to make well-reasoned decisions for the benefit of society. In order to best serve the public, engineers need to communicate their judgments to engineers, non-specialists, clients, and a variety of others. One key goal in all such interactions will be to convey themselves as competent professionals; either as insiders to other engineers, or as authoritative experts to those seeking their advice. The art of engineering, in short, is tightly bound to the negotiation of engineering identity: engineers must be able to practice engineering as art and develop sound judgments that balance complex, competing objectives or constraints, and they must simultaneously convey these judgments in ways that will help them identify-and be recognized as-engineers. Despite this tight connection, however, little work to date has investigated the relationship between the writing engineering students do and the development of engineering identities, particularly in terms of engineering judgment. This project addresses this gap by exploring how students' experiences with writing shape their identification with the engineering profession and the way they convey engineering judgments to better ensure that tomorrow's engineering workforce will best serve the needs of public. To investigate the ways students produce engineer identities in written artifacts through which they expect to be recognized as engineers, the project employs a two-phase qualitative case study; Phase 1 uses semi-structured interviews and analyses of student work to explore engineering identity production in writing, and Phase 2 uses those results to design and study assignments intended to more effectively foster engineering identity production in writing. The study is grounded in Gee's use of identity as an analytic lens, Tonso's identity production theory, and Lea and Street's academic literacy approach. In Phase 1, the case studies will focus on the ways students produce engineer identities through their written projects. Course documents (including assignments and related material) as well as instructors' autoethnographic field notes on implementation will provide contextual data for the case. In Phase 2, the insights from the initial cases will be used to design appropriate teaching tools and approaches. Few studies in engineering identity have investigated the role that navigating difficult tradeoffs in writing plays in students' engineering identity construction. In addition, few investigators have examined the ways in which the artifacts students produce reflect the choices students must negotiate during their professional identity development and production. This study contributes to our knowledge of how a critical professional practice-writing-contributes to the development of students' holistic engineering identities in ways that best prepare them to develop products and systems that meet societies needs.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.

该项目旨在通过了解学习在学校写作的经​​验如何帮助学生发展工程判断力及其作为负责任的专业人员的身份来更好地为专业工作做好准备。工程学科在其科学原则的应用中是严格的，这些原则在本科工程教室中直接解决。但是，工程师还被要求做出隐含地说明复杂标准的决策，包括那些使用或受其设计系统和雇主经济需求影响的人的福利。结果，在许多方面，工程是一种艺术，要求从业者常规应对需要专业判断的困难权衡。这些判断包括经常冲突的经济，道德，社会和基于价值的方面，要求工程师做出良好的决定以使社会受益。为了最好地为公众服务，工程师需要将其判断与工程师，非专家，客户和其他各种各样的交流。在所有此类互动中，一个关键目标是将自己传达为有能力的专业人士。作为其他工程师的内部人士，或者是寻求建议的人的权威专家。简而言之，工程学的艺术与工程认同的谈判紧密约束：工程师必须能够作为艺术练习工程，并制定合理的判断，以平衡复杂，竞争的目标或约束，并且必须以帮助他们识别并被认可为参与的方式同时传达这些判断。尽管有这种紧密的联系，但是迄今为止，很少有工作调查了学生的写作工程与工程身份的发展之间的关系，尤其是在工程判断方面。该项目通过探索学生在写作方面的经验如何塑造他们在工程专业的身份以及他们传达工程判断的方式以更好地确保明天的工程劳动力将最好地满足公众需求的方式来解决这一差距。为了调查学生在他们期望被公认为工程师的书面文物中产生工程师身份的方式，该项目采用了两阶段的定性案例研究；第1阶段使用半结构化的访谈和学生工作的分析来探索工程认同的书面形式，第2阶段使用这些结果来设计和研究旨在更有效地以书面形式促进工程认同的生产。这项研究是基于Gee将身份用作分析镜头，Tonso的身份生产理论以及Lea and Street的学术素养方法的基础。在第1阶段，案例研究将重点介绍学生通过书面项目产生工程师身份的方式。课程文档（包括作业和相关材料）以及有关实施的自身人口字段注释将为案件提供上下文数据。在第2阶段，最初情况的见解将用于设计适当的教学工具和方法。在工程身份方面，很少有研究调查了在学生工程身份构建中引导艰难的折衷作用的作用。此外，很少有调查人员研究学生产生的工件的方式反映了学生在专业身份发展和生产过程中必须进行谈判的选择。这项研究有助于我们了解批判性专业实践撰写的贡献，如何以最佳的方式为学生的整体工程认同的发展开发，以准备开发满足社会需求的产品和系统。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并认为通过基金会的知识分子和更广泛的影响，可以通过评估来获得支持，以审查Criteria。