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系如何培养更具包容性、心理安全的环境，让博士生能够安全地进行人际冒险，特别是在研究环境中。心理安全的环境的特点是人们可以安全地发表意见。想法和担忧、愿意寻求反馈、彼此抱有积极的意图、参与建设性的对抗、敢于冒险和实验，所有这些本质上都是有风险的人际行为。在学术研究环境中，教师在以下方面发挥着重要的领导作用。在研究小组内营造一个心理安全的环境。尽管工程系教师拥有强大的研究技能，但他们通常很少甚至没有接受过如何有效地为研究生提供社会心理支持以及如何营造积极的团队氛围的培训。文献表明，女性和其他代表性不足的群体仍然经常遇到“冷漠”的学术氛围。在 STEM 领域，或缺乏归属感，导致负面结果，例如心理困扰增加和/或对学习、创造力和创新至关重要的智力冒险的恐惧，这些结果阻碍了研究生的能力。履行他们的学术责任，可能会劝阻他们这项研究将进一步加深我们对学术研究环境中心理安全的理解，并为如何培养包容性、包容性的务实策略和干预措施的制定提供信息。支持广泛工作成果的心理安全研究氛围 确定在研究生教育环境中建立心理安全的有效方法可以提高学生的学习和表现，这将支持工程师的专业形成和创新工程研究的产生。改善指导关系和研究氛围还将支持研究生的福祉、保留和扩大参与。因此，这项研究的首要目的是进一步了解工程研究生研究环境中的心理安全，并制定积极的解决方案，进一步促进博士生在其研究小组中的心理安全。行业环境中的大量研究证据表明，心理安全支持个人/团体的学习、绩效和创新，并减轻与工作相关的压力，但目前还没有研究实验室中心理安全的影响。 ，也没有教师如何有效地开发它。拟议的研究利用解释性混合方法设计与访谈纵向结合解释性混合方法设计将利用调查和两组访谈来检查导师在研究小组中博士生心理安全中的作用以及相关的工作成果，例如。该调查将首先描述教师顾问指导、博士生心理安全以及随后的积极和消极的工作相关结果之间的关系，以及这些关系对于来自不同人口背景的学生有何不同。调查确定的（解释性的纵向访谈将记录加入研究小组的博士生的经历，以及指导教师如何传达影响研究小组成员心理安全的政策、规范和价值观。这项研究的结果将得到利用。开发教育资源，包括为教师顾问举办基于情景的培训研讨会，以支持研究小组的心理安全，以及为研究生提供了解心理安全的教育模块。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。