Department of Life Sciences Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America.
Morgridge Institute for Research, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Jun 15;17(6):e0269949. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269949. eCollection 2022.
The idea of faculty engaging in meaningful dialogue with different publics instead of simply communicating their research to interested audiences has gradually morphed from a novel concept to a mainstay within most parts of the academy. Given the wide variety of public engagement modalities, it may be unsurprising that we still lack a comprehensive and granular understanding of factors that influence faculty willingness to engage with public audiences. Those nuances are not always captured by quantitative surveys that rely on pre-determined categories to assess scholars' willingness to engage. While closed-ended categories are useful to examine which factors influence the willingness to engage more than others, it is unlikely that pre-determined categories comprehensively represent the range of factors that undermine or encourage engagement, including perceptual influences, institutional barriers, and scholars' lived experiences. To gain insight into these individual perspectives and lived experiences, we conducted focus group discussions with faculty members at a large midwestern land-grant university in the United States. Our findings provide context to previous studies of public engagement and suggest four themes for future research. These themes affirm the persistence of institutional barriers to engaging with the public, particularly the expectations in the promotion process for tenure-track faculty. However, we also find a perception that junior faculty and graduate students are challenging the status quo by introducing a new wave of attention to public engagement. This finding suggests a "trickle-up" effect through junior faculty and graduate students expecting institutional support for public engagement. Our findings highlight the need to consider how both top-down factors such as institutional expectations and bottom-up factors such as graduate student interest shape faculty members' decisions to participate in public engagement activities.
教师与不同公众进行有意义的对话，而不仅仅是将研究成果传达给感兴趣的受众，这种理念逐渐从一个新颖的概念演变为大多数学术界的主要内容。鉴于公众参与的方式多种多样，我们仍然缺乏对影响教师与公众受众互动意愿的因素的全面而细致的理解，这可能并不奇怪。这些细微差别并不总是被依赖于预先确定的类别来评估学者参与意愿的定量调查所捕捉到。虽然封闭类别对于检查哪些因素比其他因素更能影响参与意愿很有用，但预先确定的类别不太可能全面代表破坏或鼓励参与的因素范围，包括感知影响、制度障碍和学者的生活经历。为了深入了解这些个人观点和生活经历，我们与美国一所中西部赠地大学的教师进行了焦点小组讨论。我们的研究结果为公众参与的先前研究提供了背景，并为未来的研究提出了四个主题。这些主题肯定了与公众互动的制度障碍的持续存在，特别是对终身教职教师晋升过程中的期望。然而，我们也发现一种看法，即初级教师和研究生通过引入对公众参与的新关注，正在挑战现状。这一发现表明，通过初级教师和研究生期望获得机构对公众参与的支持，出现了一种“涓滴效应”。我们的研究结果强调了需要考虑机构期望等自上而下的因素以及研究生兴趣等自下而上的因素如何影响教师参与公众参与活动的决定。
