Research Initiation: The Influences of Engineering and Science Identities among Faculty in the Mentoring of Graduate Students

研究启动：教师工程和科学身份对研究生指导的影响

• 批准号: 2306239
• 负责人: David O'Neill
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 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: 2023-08-15 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2306239&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Research; Initiation; Influences; Engineering; Science

Each person has a complex identity shaped by various factors such as their gender, race, socio-economic status, and background. Additionally, the roles individuals hold, like that of research engineers who also serve as research scientists and engineers, contribute to their identity in differing amounts for different individuals. While previous research has shown the significance of a mentor's identity in mentor-mentee relationships, no specific studies have focused on the contributions of engineering and research identities to these relationships among research engineers. This research project aims to explore different aspects of identity in Engineering Research Mentors (ERMs), who in this study refer to engineering faculty at research universities. The project aims to understand how these aspects of identity influence the mentoring approaches adopted by ERMs. The ultimate goal is to enhance mentoring practices in academic engineering research settings, addressing issues such as PhD students failing to complete their degrees. Fully integrated in this project is the research initiation objective to train the Principal Investigator (PI) in mixed-methods research and support their first funded project in engineering education research. This will not only enable the PI to succeed in future studies but also lay the foundation for those studies that have already been conceptualized.The research goal of this project will be to understand how engineering research mentors approach mentor-mentee relationships differently based on the degree to which they identify as engineers and/or research scientists. The overall research question asked in this proposal is: How do the strengths of Engineering Identity (EI) and Research Science Identity (RSI) operationalize in Engineering Research Mentors’ relationships with mentees? To answer this question, we will quantify EI and RSI in engineering research mentors through a survey with explicit questions and an implicit association test, followed by in-depth qualitative interviews, with the following specific aims: 1) Obtain measurements of EI and RSI in ERMs and explore contributory factors, 2) Determine to what extent an ERM’s explicit and implicit measures of identity agree, and 3) Understand the operationalization of these identities in the ERM’s mentoring relationships. Through these aims, the study will seek to answer the following four research questions: RQ1: What is the distribution of explicit EI and explicit RSI of ERMs? RQ2: What is the distribution of implicit EI–RSI identity bias of ERMs? RQ3: What is the agreement between explicit and implicit measurements of EI–RSI identity bias? RQ4: How do identity and identity bias operationalize in ERMs’ mentor-mentee relationships? This work is original in that: data obtained from these steps will be the first ever measurements of EI and RSI in the understudied group of ERMs; this work will obtain the first implicit measurements of EI and RSI in any group of engineers; and these measurements will both guide qualitative interviews and provide meaningful context to the findings. Deeper understanding of how an ERM’s own professional identities affect her/his mentoring will create opportunities for improved mentorship and refined mentorship-training programs. Interventions to improve mentoring through program design and mentor development will benefit student recruitment, retention, and success, all of which will support efforts to broaden participation in engineering.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.

每个人都有一个由性别、种族、社会经济地位和背景等多种因素塑造的复杂身份。此外，个人所扮演的角色（例如同时担任研究科学家和工程师的研究工程师）也有助于他们的身份。虽然之前的研究表明导师身份在导师与受训者关系中的重要性，但没有具体的研究关注工程和研究身份对研究工程师之间这些关系的贡献。工程研究导师身份的不同方面（ERM），在本研究中指的是研究型大学的工程教师，该项目旨在了解身份的这些方面如何影响 ERM 所采用的指导方法，最终目标是加强学术工程研究环境中的指导实践，解决问题。例如，未能完全融入该项目的博士生的研究启动目标是培训首席研究员（PI）进行混合方法研究并支持他们在工程教育研究中的第一个资助项目。 PI 在未来的学习中取得成功，但也为那些已经概念化的研究奠定基础。该项目的研究目标是了解工程研究导师如何根据他们将工程师和/或研究科学家视为研究问题的程度，以不同的方式处理导师与受训者的关系。该提案中提出的问题是：工程研究导师与学员的关系中工程身份（EI）和研究科学身份（RSI）的优势如何发挥作用？为了回答这个问题，我们将通过以下方法量化工程研究导师的 EI 和 RSI：带有明确问题的调查和隐性关联测试，然后进行深入的定性访谈，其具体目标如下：1) 获得 ERM 中 EI 和 RSI 的测量值并探索影响因素，2) 确定 ERM 的显性和隐性身份测量在多大程度上一致， 3) 了解这些身份在 ERM 指导关系中的运作 通过这些目标，本研究将寻求回答以下四个研究问题： RQ1：显性 EI 和显性 RSI 的分布是什么。 RQ2：ERM 的隐式 EI-RSI 身份偏差的分布是什么？ RQ3：EI-RSI 身份偏差的显式测量和隐式测量之间有何一致性？ RQ4：身份和身份偏差如何在 ERM 的指导中发挥作用？这项工作的原创性在于：从这些步骤获得的数据将是 ERM 研究组中 EI 和 RSI 的首次测量；这项工作将获得 EI 的首次隐式测量；任何工程师群体中的 RSI；这些测量既可以指导定性访谈，也可以为研究结果提供有意义的背景信息，从而为改进指导和完善指导培训计划创造机会。通过项目设计和导师培养来改善指导的干预措施将有利于学生的招募、保留和成功，所有这些都将支持扩大工程参与的努力。该奖项的法定使命是通过使用基金会的评估进行评估，并被认为值得支持智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。