2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As a global society, we face significant challenges, including environmental degradation and climate change, increasing economic inequity, rapid urbanization and population growth, the exclusion of individuals and groups from different forms of social engagement, and concerns with privacy and security. Given the omnipresent nature of technology and its influence on our lives, engineers must consider the ethical, environmental and sociological impacts of their work, and some engineering programs are considering new pedagogical methods and broader frameworks to engage students in macroethics, sociotechnical thinking and engineering for social justice. Using a particular perspective on sociotechnical thinking (STSE – Science, Technology, Society and the Environment), the goal of this research was to explore sociotechnical thinking within engineering instructor teaching goals and practices. STSE was selected given both its inherent flexibility, and its specific features that allow for some natural connections with engineering. Using STSE also allowed for the introduction of a framework from a different context to assess its utility and relevance to the engineering landscape.

This work is part of a broader study which employed an online survey, featuring both qualitative and quantitative methods, with engineering instructors at four universities in Canada, designed to provide an initial understanding and broad overview of STSE in the context of engineering education. Following the survey, a smaller group of instructors participated in semi-structured interviews, to provide a deeper understanding of instructor goals and practices related to STSE. The results of the interviews is the focus of this paper.

This work demonstrated that engineering instructors employ a diversity of goals and practices in their teaching, but with a strong bend towards real-world applications through a variety of mechanisms. Instructors demonstrated moderate support for STSE, with a strong orientation towards problem solving and design, but shared concerns, in particular about exploring issues of social justice and fairness and the possibility of imposing bias on students. This is reflective of work in engineering education that highlights the apolitical nature of engineering and its resonance in undergraduate engineering programs.