Multiple studies call for engineering education to integrate social justice into classroom instruction. Yet, there is uncertainty regarding whether integrating these social topics into engineering curriculum will support or detract from the learning of technical concepts. This study focuses on evaluating how reframing technical assessments to include social justice concepts impacts student learning and investigates how well students integrate social justice into engineering decision making. Using a within-subject design, in which students were exposed to both conditions (questions with and without social justice context), we evaluate how social justice framing impacts overall student learning of technical topics. Social justice prompts are added to homework questions, and we assess students’ demonstration of knowledge of original technical content of the course, as well as their ability to consider social justice implications of engineering design. In the earlier homework assignment, the experimental group showed a significant decrease in learning when technical concepts were framed to include social justice. As the students became more familiar with social justice considerations, their learning of technical concepts became comparable to that of students who did not have the social justice components in their assignment. Their evaluation of the social implications of technical decisions also improved.
History: This paper has been accepted for the INFORMS Transactions on Education Special Issue on DEI in ORMS Classrooms.
Funding: This work was supported by the Carnegie Mellon University’s Wimmer Faculty Fellowship and the National Science Foundation [Grant 2053856]. D. Nock also acknowledges support from the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, where she is an energy fellow.
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This content will become publicly available on June 1, 2025
Social Justice, Community Engagement, and Undergraduate STEM Education: Participatory Science as a Teaching Tool
We examine the intersection of participatory science, social justice, and higher education in the United States to investigate how instructors can teach about social justice and enhance collaborations to work toward enacting social justice.
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- PAR ID:
- 10532852
- Editor(s):
- Morton, Terrell
- Publisher / Repository:
- CBE
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- CBE—Life Sciences Education
- Volume:
- 23
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1931-7913
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- learning, social justice
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Background Although engineering practice occurs in social contexts, such contexts often remain obscure in engineering education. Since engineering sciences courses are crucial in shaping engineering students' knowledge and conceptions of problem‐solving in engineering, students in both an augmented and a traditional section of a feedback control systems course were interviewed to explore perceptions of the social justice dimensions of engineering.
Purpose This study sought to understand student perceptions of social justice in the context of control systems courses.
Design/Method This study used a qualitative, case study methodology. Inductive analysis was used to analyze focus groups and interviews conducted over 3 years.
Findings Through inductive analysis, we identified three primary interrelated domains: (1) varied descriptions of social justice emerged, (2) diverse perceptions surfaced on how the social and technical dimensions of engineering problems interrelate, and (3) students' conceptions of engineers yielded insight into their perspectives on social justice.
Conclusions That students did not vary substantively in perceptions of social justice across course sections suggests that prior knowledge of social justice shaped student perceptions. The findings also indicate that what students value shapes what they are learning and that student perceptions were informed by students' understanding of ethics and of engineering ideologies. These findings imply a need for distributed curricular integration of social justice concepts and for presenting social justice in the context of engineering problem‐solving. Such presentation could reinforce sociotechnical considerations inherent in engineering practice, clearly rendering visible inherent social justice considerations in engineering problems.
