2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The purpose of this WIP research paper is to promote a shift in practice in North American engineering education to stewardship of the Land.
In the book Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities (Wenger, White & Smith, 2009), “tech stewards” are community members who pay attention to and seek to influence the adaptation of a technology within their community. “Tech steward” terminology has recently gained prominence in Canadian engineering education, mainly through the Tech Stewardship Practice Program (TSPP), an online course in which more than 2000 engineering students have enrolled since 2021. The TSPP promotes technological stewardship as a set of principles and behaviors that enable technological design and development that is “beneficial for all” stakeholders and rightsholders, which is a variation on/departure from Digital Habitats, and which presents some fundamental challenges.
The idea of technology that is “beneficial for all” is aligned with some mainstream design methodologies such as one-size-fits-all design, in which the ‘best’ design must be widely usable and account for different physical abilities, cultures, identities, etc. This idea is reflected in undergraduate engineering education when students, through approaches focused on industrial principles, are motivated to design solutions that will meet the needs of all interested parties. However, despite these good intentions, efficiency and profitability are typically the main boundary conditions in engineering education (Rodrigues Affonso Alves, 2023), challenging the notion of what is “beneficial.” The second part of the phrase, ‘for all,’ adds further complications. Since humans are different across the planet, interpretations of the world change from place to place, which is reflected in how people develop their own logos of tékne (the human interpretation of the world around them) (Vieira Pinto, 2007). What is ‘beneficial’ for one may not be for another. We will emphasize the concept of "stewardship of the Land" as an alternative to "tech stewardship," drawing from philosophy of technology and technology for social development (Dagnino, 2023) to argue that human relations to Land should be central to technological development.
We will share two examples of technological development through dialogue between social movement groups and engineering academics, both from Brazil, to exemplify the difference between one-size-fits-all “tech stewardship” and stewardship of the Land. First, a cassava shredder for a flour mill in the Osvaldo de Oliveira Sustainable Development Project agrarian reform settlement, located in Córrego do Ouro, Macaé district/RJ. Second, a sales system for organic food produced by the landless Rural workers movement and sold through their store in Rio de Janeiro, Ármazem do Campo. We will discuss the relevance of promoting technology for social development practices in North America and how we see these practices connected to the concept of Land stewardship and Indigenous practices of stewarding the land.
This paper is part of a bigger dream to invite new imaginaries into engineering education, so we can build practices that center stewardship of the Land.