Introduction:This study identified underlying career orientation types of clinical research coordinators (CRCs) using cluster analysis. Select career (satisfaction, engagement, and planning) and competency-related (perceived competence) information was used to identify four distinct career orientation types.Method:A web-based survey was administered to CRCs employed in one of four research institutions affiliated with a National Institutes of Health-funded Clinical and Translational Research Award (CTSA) in the southeastern USA. Each respondent completed a survey containing questions about personal background, individual attributes, perceived professional competence, and career orientation.Results:The first CRC type (35.2%) possessed a positive, knowledge-seeking orientation, characterized by high career-related scores but a conservative assessment of perceived competence. The second CRC type (18.6%) represented an optimistic and confident career orientation reflected in moderate to high scores on each of the four identifying factors. The third CRC type (27.6%) reflected an inconsistent career orientation highlighted by lowered perceived competence. The final CRC type (18.6%) reflected a disengaged orientation characterized by negative responses to all career and competence factors.Conclusion:Understanding the career orientation of CRCs can be helpful to institutional administrators and clinical investigators as they seek to support the professional development of CRCs through tailored training efforts or work-related supports. Knowledge of career orientation may also inform individual CRCs as they manage their personal career paths by assessing current levels of functioning, career-related strengths or weaknesses, and training needs.
This study aimed to develop collective intelligence (CI) based instructional models for teaching socioscientific issues on the basis of intimate collaboration with science teachers, and to investigate the participating teachers' perceptions on the effectiveness of the instructional models. Adapting the ADDIE model, we suggested three types of SSI instructional models (i.e. generative model, exploratory model, and decision-making model). Generative models emphasized the process of brainstorming ideas or possible solutions for SSI. Exploratory models focused on providing students opportunities to explore various SSI cases and diverse perspectives to understand its controversial nature and complexity. Decision-making models encouraged students to negotiate or develop a group-consensus on SSI through the dialogical process. After implementing the instructional models in the science classroom, the teachers reported that CI-based SSI instructional models contributed to encouraging students' active participation and collaboration as well as to improving the quality of their argument or discourses on SSI. They also supported the importance of developing collective consciousness on the issues in the beginning of the SSI class, providing independent time and space for reflecting on their personal values and opinions with scientific evidence, and formulating an atmosphere where they freely exchanged opinions and feedback for constructing better collective ideas.
Background
Despite increasing awareness of the importance of promoting the social responsibility of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals, few intervention programs have been developed to enhance the social responsibility of college students or adults in the STEM fields. In this paper, we introduced a new instructional program, called ENACT (engage, navigate, anticipate, conduct, and take action) and examined whether the program increased the social responsibility among safety engineering students (N = 46) recruited from a university located in a southern metropolitan area of South Korea.
Results
In the ENACT program, the college students selected and explored socioscientific issues (SSIs) of their own interest then autonomously engaged in scientific and engineering group projects spanning a semester where they developed solutions to the SSIs and shared them with their communities. At the conclusion of the intervention in this study, they displayed an increased social responsibility regarding the consideration of societal needs and demands, civic engagement and services, and participation in policy decision-making. Social responsibility scores measured after the intervention (post-test) correlated with students' willingness to voluntarily participate in projects involving SSIs. In addition, the intervention effects were more pronounced for the students who initially had medium and low social responsibility scores.
Conclusions
We have shown that social responsibility can be nurtured by systemic instructional approaches, and increased social responsibility can lead to greater commitment to resolving SSIs. Mastering engineering content knowledge and skills is the key element of engineering curricula. However, we are compelled to incorporate social responsibility into the STEM curriculum. We believe that the ENACT model contributes toward this end.
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