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

基本信息

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

项目摘要

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在学校学习写作的经历如何帮助培养学生的工程判断能力及其作为负责任的专业人士的身份，为工程师更好地从事专业工作做好准备。工程学科严格应用科学原理，这些原理在本科工程课堂上直接讲授。然而，工程师还被要求做出隐含复杂标准的决策，包括使用其设计的系统或受其设计的系统影响的人的福利以及雇主的经济需求。因此，从很多方面来说，工程是一门艺术，要求从业者经常进行需要专业判断的困难权衡。这些判断包括经常相互冲突的经济、道德、社会和基于价值的维度，要求工程师为了社会的利益做出合理的决定。为了最好地服务公众，工程师需要将他们的判断传达给工程师、非专家、客户和其他各种人。所有此类互动的一个关键目标就是将自己展现为有能力的专业人士；要么作为其他工程师的内部人士，要么作为寻求建议的人的权威专家。简而言之，工程艺术与工程身份的谈判紧密相关：工程师必须能够将工程作为艺术来实践，并形成平衡复杂的、相互竞争的目标或约束的合理判断，并且他们必须同时以以下方式传达这些判断：将帮助他们识别并被认可为工程师。然而，尽管存在这种紧密的联系，迄今为止，很少有人研究工程学生的写作与工程身份发展之间的关系，特别是在工程判断方面。该项目通过探索学生的写作经验如何塑造他们对工程专业的认同以及他们传达工程判断的方式来解决这一差距，以更好地确保未来的工程队伍能够最好地满足公众的需求。为了调查学生如何在书面作品中产生工程师身份，并希望通过这些作品被认可为工程师，该项目采用了两阶段的定性案例研究；第一阶段使用半结构化访谈和对学生作业的分析来探索书面工程身份的产生，第二阶段使用这些结果来设计和研究作业，旨在更有效地促进书面工程身份的产生。这项研究基于 Gee 使用身份作为分析镜头、Tonso 的身份产生理论以及 Lea 和 Street 的学术素养方法。在第一阶段，案例研究将重点关注学生通过书面项目产生工程师身份的方式。课程文件（包括作业和相关材料）以及教师关于实施的民族志实地笔记将为该案例提供背景数据。在第二阶段，最初案例的见解将用于设计适当的教学工具和方法。很少有关于工程身份的研究调查了写作中的困难权衡在学生工程身份构建中所扮演的角色。此外，很少有调查人员研究过学生制作的文物如何反映学生在职业身份发展和生产过程中必须协商的选择。这项研究有助于我们了解关键的专业实践写作如何促进学生整体工程身份的发展，从而为他们开发满足社会需求的产品和系统做好准备。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并已通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。