2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Traditionally, the discipline of engineering has been characterized as being primarily technical in nature, from this perspective, the role of the engineer is to apply their advanced knowledge of math and science to design solutions to humanity’s problems. Over the past two decades, the term “empathy” has been used with increasing frequency to describe the willingness and ability of engineers to account for the perspectives of their users (Strobel et al., 2013; Walther et al., 2020). This has led to the development of “empathetic design” techniques that recommend using a variety of methods, including contextual inquiry, personas, and empathy maps, to gain a better understanding of the user’s perspective (Lee et al., 2017; Leonard & Rayport, 1997; Lewrick et al., 2020). Despite receiving increasing attention in the literature, empathetic design has been criticized for continuing to treat users as sources of data for “expert” engineers to use (Tang, 2018). Engineering societies and regulators, such as the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), Engineers Canada (EC), and Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO), outline the conduct that is expected of professional engineers (EC, 2016; Professional Engineers Act, 2014; NSPE, 2019) stressing an engineer’s ethical obligation to protect public welfare and act in society’s best interest, foundational ethical duties. Engineers with empathy, who take the time to consider and truly understand how their work impacts users, communities, and the environment around them, are better prepared to account for concerns relating to safety, usability, social and cultural variables, and sustainability. In this way, empathy can improve engineers’ ability to make ethical decisions and adhere to professional codes of conduct (Howcroft et al., 2021).

This study investigates engineering instructors’ perceptions of empathy and empathy-focused instruction by investigating (1) how instructors define, view, and value empathy, and (2) advantages and challenges to teaching empathy in engineering courses. This paper used a qualitative analysis of an online survey that was distributed using Qualtrics software to instructors teaching engineering courses at one institution. Reponses to these questions were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify shared patterns of meaning expressed by the instructors surveyed (Braun & Clarke, 2019). RTA was chosen for analysis as it is suited to both experiential and critical framings. Results demonstrate that instructors described different understandings of empathy and opinions regarding empathy-focused instruction. Some described teaching empathy as essential, while others considered it “ridiculous.” Key advantages were interpersonal skills, improved professionalism and ethics, and improved learning environment. A lack of knowledge base, practical challenges, and confronting traditional practices were identified as key barriers to empathy-focused instruction in engineering education that will need to be addressed moving forward. Future work will include broadening this survey beyond one institution, and gathering further data through focus groups and semi-structured interviews.