CAREER: Enabling Transformational Service-Learning in Engineering through Critically Reflexive Practice

职业：通过批判性反思实践实现工程领域的变革性服务学习

• 批准号: 2143867
• 负责人: David A Delaine
• 金额: $ 59.72万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2027-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2143867&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Enabling; Transformational; Service; Learning

This CAREER project will substantially help improve the education of future engineers by preparing them to address societal challenges in meaningful ways. Undergraduate engineering coursework is heavily focused on technical preparation. However, in addition to technical skills, engineers should learn how to understand and address the needs and perspectives of the people who will be impacted by their technical solutions. This project will address this need by focusing on service-learning, that is, courses where engineering students work with communities outside of the university to help resolve a local challenge. The great benefit of service-learning is that students can learn to be socially responsible engineering professionals while positively impacting local communities. However, in practice, service-learning is very difficult which can lead to harmful impacts on the student and community participants. When not performed carefully, these courses can teach students to dismiss community perspectives and treat communities as laboratories rather than as collections of people with unique social, cultural, and historical backgrounds. Within this problem, this project will help ensure that the way engineering service-learning courses are taught maximizes benefits for all participants through transformational service-learning. More specifically, this project will investigate how instructors develop the skills, attitudes, and knowledge they need to design and implement transformational service-learning. To pursue transformational service-learning, it is necessary that educators acknowledge the substantial role that race, power, and privilege play within this pedagogy. To support educators’ understanding of the role of these factors in service-learning, a promising approach involves first developing educators’ critical reflexivity: the process by which an educator creates an internal dialog and evaluates their own positionality to articulate its impact on educational processes and outcomes. This project will engage the framework of critical reflexivity, addressing research questions that explore (1) service-learning engineering educators’ descriptions of their assumptions about service-learning and their own positionalities within this context, (2) the way these assumptions and positionalities impact their approaches to teaching service-learning, and (3) the impact that critical reflexivity has in supporting transformational service-learning outcomes. This investigation will begin with interviews, and findings will be used to engage educators from a community of practice that focuses on reflection and action to produce further knowledge. The results will inform the development, assessment, and validation of a short course and guidebook to propagate this new knowledge while also refining this project’s findings. Along with dissemination through publications and conferences, this propagation approach enables widespread impact of these outcomes by closely engaging potential adopters, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will pursue transformational service-learning. Through partnering with large networks of engineering and service-learning educators both nationally and internationally, these products will be used to promote a paradigm shift in engineering service-leaning towards impactful community-oriented approaches. This CAREER project will create new knowledge about (a) how SL engineering educator positionality and assumptions hinder and enable service-learning practice; (b) how critical reflexivity influences engineering educators’ adoption of approaches to elicit transformational service-learning; and (c) how engineering educators can develop service-learning coursework to achieve transformational impacts for social justice and equity across marginalized communities. Collectively, these outcomes will lead to the development of engineering civic-minded engineering citizens who equitably engage with local communities and are prepared for resolving complex societal challenges.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.

这个职业项目将通过准备以有意义的方式应对社会挑战，从而实质上有助于改善未来工程师的教育。本科工程课程主要专注于技术准备。但是，除了技术技能外，工程师还应学习如何理解和解决将受到其技术解决方案影响的人们的需求和观点。该项目将通过专注于服务学习，即工程专业的学生与大学以外的社区合作以帮助解决当地挑战的课程来满足这一需求。服务学习的巨大好处是，学生可以学会成为社会责任的工程​​专业人员，同时对当地社区产生积极影响。但是，实际上，服务学习非常困难，这可能会对学生和社区参与者产生有害影响。当不仔细表演时，这些课程可以教会学生驳斥社区的观点，并将社区视为实验室，而不是作为具有独特社会，文化和历史背景的人的集合。在此问题中，该项目将有助于确保教授学习服务学习课程的方式通过变革性服务学习最大化所有参与者的收益。更具体地说，该项目将调查教师如何发展和实施转型服务学习所需的技能，参加和知识。要购买变革性的服务学习，教育者有必要承认该教学法中种族，权力和特权发挥的重要作用。为了支持教育者对这些因素在服务学习中的作用的理解，一种有前途的方法涉及首先发展教育者的批判反射性：教育者创建内部对话的过程并评估其自身的位置，以表达其对教育过程和成果的影响。该项目将参与批判性反思性的框架，解决探索（1）在这种情况下对服务学习及其自身位置的假设的描述（2）这些假设和位置影响其对教学服务学习的方法的方式，以及（3）对重反思性的影响，这些假设和位置会影响其影响不足的转型，这些假设和位置会影响他们的方式，以探讨（1）探索学习的研究问题。这项投资将从访谈开始，调查结果将用于吸引来自一个实践社区的教育者，该社区着重于反思和行动以产生进一步的知识。结果将为简短课程和指南的发展，评估和验证提供信息，以传播这一新知识，同时还完善了该项目的发现。除了通过出版物和会议传播，这种传播方法通过紧密吸引潜在的采用者来赋予这些结果的宽度影响，从而增加了他们追求变革性服务学习的可能性。通过在国内和国际上与大型工程和服务学习教育者建立合作，这些产品将用于促进工程服务范围向有影响力的面向社区导向的方法的范式转变。该职业项目将创建有关（a）SL工程教育者的位置和假设的新知识，并促进服务学习实践； （b）批判性反思性如何影响工程教育者采用转型服务学习的方法； （c）工程教育者如何开发服务学习课程，以对边缘化社区的社会正义和公平产生变革的影响。总的来说，这些成果将导致工程意识的工程公民的发展，他们同时与当地社区互动，并为解决复杂的社会挑战做好了准备。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的知识分子和更广泛的影响来评估来评估。