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Abstract Background Civil engineers design systems that have the potential to impact existing oppressive societal conditions. Critical action—the ability to recognize and act against oppressive conditions—is an obligation for civil engineers committed to building a more just world.
Purpose/Hypothesis History reveals that civil engineers often do not take critical action and accrediting bodies (e.g., ABET) have responded by creating requirements to consider social factors and contexts. Considering these endeavors, we ask: To what extent do civil engineering students demonstrate critical action attitudes when prompted by engineering problem‐solving? In what ways does culturally relevant problem‐solving influence critical action attitudes?
Design/Method Employing transformative action as a theoretical framework, we assessed students' responses to a design question on three levels that perpetuate or disrupt oppression (avoidant, destructive, and critical action). The empirical study used qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine survey responses of 375 civil engineering undergraduate students across 12 US universities.
Results The results showed that engineering students largely avoided discussing taking critical action, remaining focused on technical and nontechnical factors that evaded acknowledgement of sociopolitical factors. Nevertheless, when exposed to culturally relevant problem‐solving, students showed a statistically significant increase in both critical and destructive action responses.
Conclusions We posit that students' exposure to culturally relevant problem‐solving can enhance students' critical action attitudes. The results call on the need for civil engineering educators to cultivate culturally relevant problem‐solving in civil engineering curriculum.
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This dataset includes anonymized interview data about the provision of water services in rural Alaska, focused on holistically understanding water service challenges using a systems approach. Eighteen semi-structured interviews with 19 stakeholders involved in the provision of water services in rural Alaska are included. These interviews were conducted from January 25th to June 28th, 2021. Interviews were conducted via teleconferencing or phone and were recorded (with permission), transcribed, checked for quality, and anonymized. Interview data was analyzed using a deductive-inductive qualitative content analysis. The data supported the following research objectives: 1) identify challenges within the financial, human, natural, and technical systems involved in the provision of water services in rural Alaska, and 2) use a systems thinking approach to identify interdependencies between systems.more » « less
