2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Civil engineering works have the potential to exert long-term effects on society's fabric in ways that are not fully understood in the early phases of the systems development cycle. Despite the potential, civil engineering education has much room for improvement in training students on the social implications of engineering works, particularly how engineering can shape social vulnerability under climate change, natural disasters, and aging infrastructure. This work in progress presents the results of the first stage of a broader study aimed at developing curricular interventions that build social justice awareness and compassion amongst students in the [name] School of Civil Engineering at [university name].
We followed an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach (QUAN-qual), collecting quantitative data through a questionnaire followed by a round of interviews with those participants who agreed to continue being involved in the research.
For the quantitative part, we used a concurrent mixed methods questionnaire that assessed the perspectives and attitudes of undergraduate and graduate students towards social justice behaviors and compassion; this last one is considered a precursor of social justice. The questionnaire was structured in three sections guided by three published surveys: 1) an adaptation of the Social Justice Perspective Survey (SJPS) related to perspectives on the role of social justice in engineering practice and previous experiences; 2) the Social Justice Attitudes sub-scale from Social Justice Scale (SJS), and 3) the Compassion to Others subscale from the Compassionate Engagement and Action Scales for Self and Others. An additional open-ended question was incorporated into the questionnaire to get feedback on participants' previous experience with social justice themes in the civil engineering program. Respondents completed the questionnaire voluntarily.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted for the qualitative part of the study to explore further participants' previous experience with educational initiatives related to social justice. This stage of the work also provided insight into perceived meaningful ways to deliver this kind of content and its impact on students, identifying the needs and barriers to incorporating social justice skills and content in curricula. We expect that the results of this work will inform the following stages of the study, in particular guiding the identification of learning objectives for a pilot curriculum to be delivered in Spring 2023 and serving as a baseline to measure future pedagogical interventions.