Changing the Conversation: Messages for

This publication builds on the 2008 NAE publication, Changing the conversation messages for improving public understanding of engineering —Preface. 

NAE. 2008. Changing the Conversation Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering. Washington National Academies Press. 

Conduct outreach to teachers, students, and parents. Society-sponsored teacher conferences and workshops could focus on the theme of Changing the Conversation, and materials for K-12 teachers could explain how engineering makes the world better, reflecting one of the main CTC themes. Communications about the engineering profession as a whole should be the main focus, but messages tuned to individual disciplines are also useful. 

The NAE has developed tools and resources to help spread the CTC messages. Other organizations have provided assistance as well, with the result that it is now much easier for interested parties to join in the effort to change the conversation about engineering. 

First, a careful descriptive analysis of workplace discourse can contribute to the development of a generalized expert model in many important and complementary ways Because the interview process can affect a subject s beliefs and values, researchers must be particularly careful when they attempt to elicit their lay audience s beliefs and misconceptions. If interviews change a subject s knowledge, then interview results will produce a skewed conception of what audiences need to know to understand risk. When interviewers employ a conversational style, for example, they can introduce new words or ideas, but they can also overlook critical concepts. If the purpose of the interview is to discover people s mental models so that communicators can construct risk messages to affect a wider audience, the interview process must not create misconceptions or reshape the subject s mental model. When researchers employ a variety of methods, they must insure that the different forms of inquiry (questionnaire or interview, for example) do not affect their results. Morgan et al. (2002) note that designing good questions is not easy. ... 

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