Informal mentorship of new engineers in the workplace

Despite the long history of apprenticeship in engineering (Wilson, 1965), little is understood about the transition from school to work in the modern engineering workforce. How do new engineers gain experience and knowledge while also gaining trust and establishing themselves with more senior engineers and their company? In this work we draw on a large ethnographic study of new engineers in their first year on the job to characterize the role and nature of apprenticeship-like training in the modern engineering workforce. In our analysis, apprenticeship on the job appears to be mostly ad hoc and fleeting with rare instances of direct intentional instruction (as opposed to in-the-moment correction or feedback). Furthermore, learning arrangements between new and more senior engineers are constrained by several factors, including the rigidity of organizational hierarchy, the thoroughness of division of labor, and the senior engineers willingness to actively mentor. For example, we see how new engineers attempt to gain knowledge and experiences from more senior engineers, but are often rebuked due to corporate structure and hierarchy. Yet, at the same time, we see examples of new engineers successfully finding senior co-workers who recognize the importance of training them to navigate these restrictive structures and hierarchies for the benefit of not only the new engineer, but also the senior engineer and the company itself. We find a variety of learning arrangements, including isolated new engineers struggling to find a place in their new work, while also learning new skills, and fully collaborative work between new and senior engineers. We use these findings to suggest ways that engineering schools and companies can help support and enrich the learning of new engineers in the workforce

Transporting knowledge: a case study of meaning making on the pathways of science communication

In this paper I study scientists, reporters, and news readers as they produce and/or interpret scientific texts. Imagining all of these actors as science learners allows me to compare across their individual understandings to follow ideas through the pathways of science communication. I provide a case study of how one scientist’s understandings causes difficulties for a reporter and two news readers. This case problematizes popular assumptions about the causes of public misunderstandings of science

Competing epistemologies in the construction of popular science

This paper focuses on how the personal epistemologies of scientists and science communicators shape their practices and interact with one another in the construction of popular science news. I present data from observations and interviews with scientists and reporters as they work together to produce science news to show how competing epistemologies result in compromises that—when presented to the public—might lead readers to form understandings that are at odds with disciplinary knowledge

The use of cognitive clinical interviews to explore learning from video game play

As research about the learning that results when children play video games becomes more popular, questions arise about what methodological and analytical tools are most appropriate to access and document this learning. Thus far, researchers have mostly adopted pre/post assessments, ethnography, and learning analytics. In this paper we (re)introduce cognitive clinical interviews as a methodology particularly suited to answering many of the most pressing questions about games and learning. To that end we describe four challenges of studying learning in video games with pre-post assessments that we claim can be addressed by the addition of clinical interviews. We then consider how clinical interviews can help to explain and describe patterns detected from ethnographic observations and detailed game play logs

Fight the Power! Games, Thermostats, and the Energy Patriarchy

Confronting issues of global climate change will require creative approaches to energy consumption across a range of human activities. This design case looks at the evolution of a physical/digital hybrid board game that we created to encourage families to reflect on household energy consumption and environmental sustainability. Design in this context was particularly challenging due to the nature of household heating and cooling systems, which tend to be opaque and difficult to understand. Our challenge was to employ game mechanics to help build up interest, awareness, and understanding of heating and cooling systems, while at the same time providing an enjoyable and engaging activity. Through many rounds of playtesting and interviews, we converged on the design presented here. We start with a conceptual framework describing modern energy practices, after which we describe the game design and reflect on its strengths and weaknesses

Invasion of the energy monsters: a family board game about energy consumption

We present Invasion of the Energy Monsters, a board game that attempts to highlight the role of family practices in household energy consumption. While household energy management activities — such as controlling heating and cooling systems — tend to be adult centric, we believe that children and adolescents have a meaningful role to play in helping their families move toward more sustainable ways of living. To that end, Energy Monsters has been designed to scaffold interactions between family members and encourage conversations about electricity consumption and waste. In this paper we provide an overview of our current design and a brief summary of results from our playtesting sessions with five families, and a description of versions that are under development

The Social Psychology of Religion and Wellbeing: Is a Belief in a God, Good for one’s Wellbeing? An Empirical Inquiry

Objectives: The correlations between religion, age, education, ethnicity, social class, and subjective psychological wellbeing (SWB) of Jamaicans were examined and the predictability of those selected predisposing conditions on SWB were determined.Method: Analysis of the data was by bivariate and multivariate analyses, taken from a nationally representative survey of 1,338 Jamaican adults ≥18 years. The survey was conducted between July and August 2006 by the Centre of Leadership and Governance (CLG), Department of Government, the University of the West Indies, Mona-Jamaica.Findings: The findings indicated that religiosity was positively correlated with SWB as well as ethnicity, education and social class, and that gender was negatively related to SWB. It can be generalized, using multiple regressions, that religiosity, race, gender, education and social class can explain 7.7% of the variance in SWB of Jamaicans. Religiosity was found to be a weak predictor of subjective wellbeing (SWB), (1%), with race contributing 0.4% and gender at 0.3% been among the least suppliers to the model. However, self-reported social class made the most significant contribution to SWB - (3.9%) - along with years of schooling which contributed 2.2%.Conclusion: The study showed that religion provides for a different psychological state for its practitioners as well as influences the general state of wellbeing