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“A culture of disengagement” is what Erin Cech [1, see also 4,9] has named the phenomenon that, within engineering schools, students graduate with less interest in societal issues than when they arrive. Much of this disengagement is attributed to mindsets ([2]: centrality of military and corporate organizations, uncritical acceptance of authority, technical narrowness, positivism and the myth of objectivity) and ideologies ([1]: technical-social dualism, depoliticization, meritocracy) that create a socio-technical divide that encourages many students to marginalize social issues related to engineering. In recent years, some scholars have proposed ways to overcome this disengagement, for example Jon Leydens and Juan Lucena’s (2018) “Engineering for Social Justice Criteria.” However, little research has been conducted to trace how engineering students are taking up these programs. This paper builds on an NSF-funded ethnographic study of cultural practices in a Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program that serves 1st and 2nd year engineering students [6, 22- 23]. That research study sought to answer: How does this program cultivate engineering students' macro-ethical reasoning about science and technology? Radoff and colleagues [6] identified four salient ways that students described the cultural practices of the STS program: 1) cultivating an ethics of care, 2) making the invisible visible, 3) understanding systems from multiple perspectives, and 4) empowering students to develop moral stances as engineers in society (developing a sense of agency). This paper builds off of insights uncovered from Radoff et al by zooming in on the ways students describe how their sense of agency manifests during their time in the program. On top of interview and focus group data, we draw examples from STS student participant observations in STS courses [27]. We use examples drawn from this data to reflect on how encouraging student agency can help overcome the socio-technical divide.
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Partnering with undergraduate engineering students to unearth cultural practices within a Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program
Our research team is currently conducting an ethnographic investigation of a Science, Technology, and Society Living Learning Community (STS-LLC). Our investigation focuses on understanding how engineering students’ macro-ethical reasoning develops within the cultural practices of this community. Our approach to this investigation deliberately partners faculty research leads and a group of undergraduate research fellows (RFs) chosen based on their “insider” status within the STS-LLC cohort being investigated. This collaboration required building substantial infrastructure and routines for disrupting the usual hierarchies that exist between researchers and “participants.” This paper will share multiple perspectives, from both RFs and research leads, on the mutually beneficial relationships that emerged within this research collaboration. We will draw on research team meeting notes, research team meeting recordings, and formative feedback survey responses to support our claims. Research leads will share their perspectives on recruiting, onboarding and working with the RFs and describe some of the macro-ethical considerations that motivated their partnership with RFs. RFs will also describe the multiplicity of ways they have participated in and benefited from this research collaboration. This paper will share sociotechnical innovations that supported the development of effective co-learning and co-working processes. These innovations will be described both in terms of the activities, routines, and artifacts that structured our work and the purposes these activities served. Some innovations were constructed by the research leads in order to: (a) support collaboration and mutual engagement, (b) support engineering students in developing competence with ethnographic methods, (c) expand awareness of the engineering education research literature, (d) empower students to refine their own thinking about macroethics and the purpose of education, (e) recognize particular “knowledge-building” games within research activities, and (f) create space for students’ values and political agendas to shape the direction of the research. We will share some example innovations that were iteratively refined in dialogue with RFs and other example innovations that were developed through the process of coworking with RFs, such as GroupMe communication channels, multi-vocal field noting, and prompts for scaffolding reflections on classroom events. We will describe how the deliberate social and technical organization of this collaboration enabled particular forms of mutually beneficial relationships.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1916929
- PAR ID:
- 10451332
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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“A culture of disengagement” is what Erin Cech [1, see also 4,9] has named the phenomenon that, within engineering schools, students graduate with less interest in societal issues than when they arrive. Much of this disengagement is attributed to mindsets ([2]: centrality of military and corporate organizations, uncritical acceptance of authority, technical narrowness, positivism and the myth of objectivity) and ideologies ([1]: technical-social dualism, depoliticization, meritocracy) that create a socio-technical divide that encourages many students to marginalize social issues related to engineering. In recent years, some scholars have proposed ways to overcome this disengagement, for example Jon Leydens and Juan Lucena’s (2018) “Engineering for Social Justice Criteria.” However, little research has been conducted to trace how engineering students are taking up these programs. This paper builds on an NSF-funded ethnographic study of cultural practices in a Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program that serves 1st and 2nd year engineering students [6, 22- 23]. That research study sought to answer: How does this program cultivate engineering students' macro-ethical reasoning about science and technology? Radoff and colleagues [6] identified four salient ways that students described the cultural practices of the STS program: 1) cultivating an ethics of care, 2) making the invisible visible, 3) understanding systems from multiple perspectives, and 4) empowering students to develop moral stances as engineers in society (developing a sense of agency). This paper builds off of insights uncovered from Radoff et al by zooming in on the ways students describe how their sense of agency manifests during their time in the program. On top of interview and focus group data, we draw examples from STS student participant observations in STS courses [27]. We use examples drawn from this data to reflect on how encouraging student agency can help overcome the socio-technical divide.more » « less
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Many studies show that college engineering students’ sense of ethical and social responsibility declines over the course of their college careers (Cech, 2014; Canny & Bielefeldt, 2015; Schiff et al., 2021). One reason is that many college engineering programs and courses reinforce the social-technical dualism, which treats social and macro-ethical issues as distinct from the technical work more often associated with “real” engineering. Some programs, like the Science, Technology and Society (STS) program at [institution made confidential for review], attempt to challenge this dualism by supporting the integration of social and technical considerations within students’ design work and by asking students to grapple with the complex ethics of their work. However, this program is still embedded within a department, university, and society that subscribes to harmful ideologies such as technocracy, capitalism, and meritocracy, which value efficiency, surveillance, and control. These ideologies and their associated values constrain the imagination for what is possible in design work, for instance, by relying on technological ‘quick fixes’ to address complex social problems or by propping up large corporations as innovators, without adequately grappling with the harm that these corporations might be doing. This cultural reality creates an uphill battle for educators attempting to support engineering students’ sense of social consciousness and ethical responsibility. Thus, this study attempts to understand how engineering students’ imaginations are being constrained by societal structures and ideologies and when do they “break free” from these constraints? In this paper, we present a preliminary analysis of first-year STS students collaboratively reasoning through a simulated design scenario about a small community store facing challenges related to the Covid-19 pandemic (adapted from Gupta, 2017). Using discourse and narrative analysis, we analyzed multiple focus group interviews to identify what we call “co-occurrences,” or ideas that tend to hang together in participants’ reasoning. Examining these co-occurrences provides insight into the variety of ways socio-technical imaginaries play out in students’ design thinking.more » « less
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