Collaborative Research: Research: An exploration of how faculty mentoring influences doctoral student psychological safety and the impact on work-related outcomes

合作研究：研究：探索教师指导如何影响博士生心理安全以及对工作相关成果的影响

• 批准号: 2224422
• 负责人: Karin Jensen
• 金额: $ 15.22万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-06-01 至 2023-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2224422&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; exploration; how; faculty

There is a need to better understand how engineering departments can cultivate more inclusive, psychologically safe environments in which doctoral students feel safe to engage in interpersonal risk-taking, especially in research settings. A psychologically safe environment is characterized by people who feel safe to voice ideas and concerns, willingly seek feedback, have positive intentions to one another, engage in constructive confrontation, and feel safe to take risks and experiment, all of which are inherently risky interpersonal behaviors. In academic research environments, faculty have a major leadership role in cultivating a psychologically safe environment within research groups. While engineering faculty possess strong research skills, they often receive minimal to no training on how to effectively provide psychosocial support to graduate students and how to create a positive team climate. The literature suggests women and other underrepresented groups still frequently encounter “chilly” academic climates in STEM, or experience a lack of sense of belonging, leading to negative outcomes such as increased psychological distress and/or a fear of intellectual risk-taking that is essential to learning, creativity, and innovation. These outcomes hamper graduate students’ ability to fulfill their academic responsibilities, may dissuade them from continuing with their degree program, and contribute to a growing mental health crisis that is already plaguing graduate education. This study will further our understanding of psychological safety in academic research settings and inform the development of pragmatic strategies and interventions on how to cultivate inclusive, psychologically-safe research climates that support a wide-range of work outcomes. Identifying effective approaches to establishing psychological safety in graduate education contexts can lead to increased student learning and performance, which will support the professional formation of engineers and the production of innovative engineering research. Improved mentoring relationships and research climates will also support graduate student wellbeing, retention, and broadening participation. The overarching purpose of this study is thus to further our understanding of psychological safety in engineering graduate research settings and develop proactive solutions that can further promote doctoral students’ psychological safety in their research groups and mentoring relationship. Considerable research evidence in industry settings suggests psychological safety supports individual/group learning, performance, and innovation, and mitigates work-related stress. Yet there is no research that has been conducted to study the impact of psychological safety in research labs, nor how it is effectively developed by faculty. The proposed study leverages an explanatory mixed methods design coupled with longitudinal interviews. The explanatory mixed methods design will utilize surveys followed by two sets of interviews to examine the role of faculty mentorship in psychological safety of doctoral students in research groups and associated work outcomes such as learning and mental health. The survey will first characterize relationships between faculty advisor mentoring, doctoral student psychological safety, and subsequent positive and negative work-related outcomes and how these differ for students from different demographic backgrounds. The first set of interviews will explore the relationships identified by the surveys (explanatory design). The longitudinal interviews will document the experience of incoming doctoral students who join a research group and how faculty advisors communicate policies, norms, and values that impact the psychological safety of research group members. The results of this research will be leveraged to develop educational resources, including scenario-based training workshops for faculty advisors to support research group psychological safety and an educational module for graduate students to learn about psychological safety.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.

有必要更好地了解工程部门如何培养更具包容性的，心理安全的环境，在这些环境中，博士生可以安全地从事人际风险冒险，尤其是在研究环境中。心理安全的环境的特征是那些对表达思想和关注的人感到安全，愿意寻求反馈，对彼此具有积极意图，进行建设性的对抗，并感到安全地冒险和实验，所有这些都是固有风险的人际交往行为。在学术研究环境中，教师在研究小组内培养心理安全环境方面具有重要的领导作用。在工程教师潜在的强大研究技能的同时，他们经常获得最少的培训，即如何有效地为研究生提供社会心理支持以及如何创造积极的团队气氛。文献表明，妇女和其他代表人数不足的群体仍然经常在STEM中遇到“寒冷”的学术登山者，或者经历缺乏归属感，导致负面的结果，例如增加心理困扰和/或害怕对学习，创造性和创新至关重要的知识风险。这些成果阻碍了研究生履行其学术责任的能力，可能会阻止他们继续学习学位课程，并为已经困扰研究生教育的日益增长的心理健康危机做出贡献。这项研究将进一步理解学术研究环境中的心理安全，并为如何制定有关如何培养包容性的，心理安全的研究环境的干预措施的发展，以支持广泛的工作成果。确定在研究生教育环境中建立心理安全的有效方法可能会导致学生学习和表现的提高，这将支持工程师的专业成立和创新工程研究的生产。改善心理关系和研究气候还将支持研究生的福祉，保留和扩大参与。因此，这项研究的总体目的是进一步了解工程研究生研究环境中心理安全的理解，并开发积极的解决方案，这些解决方案可以进一步促进博士生在研究小组中的心理安全和心理关系。行业环境中的大量研究证据表明，心理安全支持个人/团体学习，绩效和创新，并减轻与工作有关的压力。然而，尚未进行研究来研究心理安全在研究实验室的影响，也没有教师如何有效地开发它。拟议的研究利用了一种爆炸性混合的方法设计以及纵向访谈。爆炸性混合方法设计将利用调查，然后进行两组访谈，以研究教师心态在研究小组中博士生中的心理安全性以及相关的工作成果（例如学习和心理健康）中的作用。该调查将首先表征教师顾问心理，博士生心理安全以及随后与工作相关的正面和负面的结果之间的关系，以及来自不同人口统计背景的学生之间的关系。第一组访谈将探讨调查（解释设计）确定的关系。纵向访谈将记录加入研究小组的即将到来的博士生的经验，以及教师顾问如何沟通影响研究小组成员心理安全的政策，规范和价值观。这项研究的结果将被利用以开发教育资源，包括基于场景的培训研讨会，为教师顾问提供支持研究小组的心理安全和研究生的教育模块，以了解心理安全性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过评估智力和广泛的影响来评估NSF的法定任务。