2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

We are developing a curricular and instructional change framework for equity-centered engineering education. For our purposes, equity-centered engineering education is grounded in an understanding of the impact of engineering on societal (in)equities. The framework is intended to support engineering instructors in promoting the development of students’ equity orientations through course experiences that affirm learners’ identities and lived experiences; center the sociotechnical nature of engineering as a field and occupation; and prioritize equity-focused teaching and assessment practices. This requires a tandem strategy of integrating equity in both instructional approaches and in course content. A key component of our framework is a set of six principles of equity-centered engineering curriculum and instruction. In this paper, we describe each principle, its supporting literature and research evidence, and examples of actionable implementations.
Briefly paraphrased, the six principles assert that equity-centered engineering curriculum and instruction: (1) embeds a sociotechnical view of engineering; (2) emphasizes instructors’ and students’ ongoing reflection on (in)equities and one’s positionality; (3) uses an equity lens to examine engineering; (4) cultivates and facilitates an equitable learning environment; (5) equitably assesses students’ learning of course content; and (6) assesses students’ developing capacity to engage in equity-centered engineering practice. We developed these principles through an iterative process of team discussion on our goals for equity-centered engineering education, interviews with equity-oriented engineering instructors and instructional staff about their approaches to equity-centered engineering education, and review of engineering, STEM, and education literature.
Equity-centered course content and instructional practices build upon each other to support equitable classroom environments in which students with varying social identities and life experiences are afforded inclusive opportunities to learn engineering and to develop equity orientations in engineering. Some of the principles paraphrased above focus primarily on course content and some are more focused on instruction, but both are necessary to teach equity-centered engineering. The first three principles address the need to challenge problematic and inauthentic views of engineering as depoliticized, neutral, meritocratic, and separated from sociocultural elements and impacts. They also address activities and reflective processes that are necessary for students and instructors to engage in. For example, principle 2 discusses both instructors’ and students’ ongoing reflection. Instructors’ reflection on their roles and positionalities in the classroom may look in some ways different from students’ reflection, and it both supports instructors’ behind-the-scenes development of equitable classroom environments as well as instructors’ explicit modeling of reflective processes for students. The last three principles address the fact that equity-centered engineering will be taught most effectively in an equitable classroom. For example, principle 6 is motivated by the fact that the content included in course assessments messages to students what knowledge is valued, so ideally equity-centered content that is taught will also be included in assessments. This illustrates the interplay between course content and instructional decisions. These principles are one component of our curricular and instructional change framework which includes wrap-around professional learning activities that will engage instructors in self-reflection and departmental learning community conversations to support efforts to design and teach equity-centered engineering courses.