Lessons Learned from Teaching Culturally Relevant Engineering Design in K–12 Classrooms and Applying Them to Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Klemetsrud, BJ; Bowman, FM

When confronted with systematic racism, social justice, and equity issues, engineering and STEM education often assumes that these topics will be covered in other courses and are not relevant to STEM. However, engineering as a discipline has one of the greatest effects on society’s well-being. From the raw materials used, products created, and emissions generated, all aspects of engineering have direct and indirect impacts on humanity. Our current engineering education project works with upper elementary and middle school teachers to apply a culturally relevant engineering design (CRED) framework within their classrooms. This framework is adapted from UTeachEngineering and culturally relevant pedagogy from Gay and Billings is embedded within each step of the design process. The North Dakota Native American Essential Understandings are used to frame and inform the culturally relevant pedagogy. Tribal elder’s stories and experiences are centered along with community leaders in each of the school’s communities. Responses from students and teachers has been overwhelmingly positive. Teachers have noticed increased engagement from all students when cultural and community leaders have been invited into the classroom and involved in the engineering design process. Students who normally do not see themselves represented in STEM professions have taken active leadership roles in their group’s engineering design process. Teachers have also recognized that culturally relevant pedagogy can be utilized in all aspects of their curricula. With the success of the project in elementary and middle school classrooms, the question then became, how can we see similar success in our college classrooms? When brainstorming how to incorporate culture and community in our curricula it became apparent that best practices in engineering education have the opportunity to intentionally involve community and cultural leaders. ABET learning outcomes require the “consideration of public health, safety, and welfare” in engineering design and “the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.” When making engineering design decisions, who will be affected if there is an accidental release of chemicals to the environment? Which communities are affected by global warming? Will the public be able to afford the new product that is being produced? Will the new processes or products add value to people’s lives? And how do we train future engineers to consider all community members, not just those who look like them, but those from the most marginalized groups? This talk will introduce our culturally relevant engineering design framework, provide ways to include community and cultural leaders within courses, and how, with the help of Northwestern’s Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion resources, to create homework problems that reflect social justice and equity issues within engineering

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