2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background: Engineering is often disconnected from social and environmental realities. Most engineering work is focused on optimizing company profits and not as it should be, improving the well-being of people and the Ecosystem. Numerous researchers have shown how the disconnection between engineering solutions and social and environmental realities affects people, mainly those from underrepresented groups. For example, Ruha Benjamin [1] denounces how technology and artificial calculators (aka. artificial intelligence) are not neutral tools but instead are codified with racial biases and hierarchies. She even uses the term “Jim Code” to define these new ways of racial oppression. Technology and engineering applications should not fall into the reinforcing of racism that Umoja Noble [2] and Ruha Benjamin [1] denounce . We argue that if engineering education were to explicitly include social and environmental justice in their curriculum, students would be more aware of the implications of our engineering work. Thus, students would be able to create more holistic solutions for people and the Ecosystem.
Purpose: This work in progress is the first step of a series of studies that seek to explore instructors’ understandings and beliefs while incorporating a critical lens in their classrooms. The critical lens is meant to guide students through the inquiry of the impact of their engineering process on themselves, other people, and the Ecosystem.
Research questions:
How do STEM instructors relate to the impact of their engineering work before and after a critical pedagogy intervention?
Method: We are conducting the study with STEM instructors. We plan on analyzing the data through thematic analysis based on Paulo Freire’s [3] critical Pedagogy and the Mycorrhiza framework [4]. We will analyze the perceptions of instructors implementing these methods in their classrooms and how the framework aligns with their beliefs. This study uses multiple sources of data from instructors' open-ended interviews, module adaptation, and reflections. The preliminary plan is to analyze the instructor’s responses before going through a critical pedagogy intervention. The second phase of the study consists of implementing the modules into the instructors' classroom, followed by guided questions to understand how students change their perception of their social and environmental impact. We will analyze the data to explore how students' awareness of social and environmental justice might change after a critical pedagogy intervention.