2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Students in undergraduate-level data science (DS) programs undergo highly technical engineering education only to enter the workforce underprepared to participate in technological development inherently enmeshed with social contexts. Responsible data science curriculum seeks to bridge this skill gap by directly teaching ethical, accountable, and socially responsible DS practices alongside technical learning objectives, often within the same course. However, in undergraduate programs with hundreds of students per course, much of a student’s learning happens outside of any interactions with faculty instructors. In particular, graduate or undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs) may facilitate much of small group classroom education: designing and shaping classroom activities, setting evaluative standards, and establishing classroom culture. The practice of teaching responsible data science curriculum in large-scale undergraduate DS programs therefore necessitates recruiting TAs fluent in teaching across the sociotechnical divide—to design activities and build learning spaces that meaningfully practice learning objectives situated across multiple fields of study.

This paper examines how TAs teach and experience responsible data science curriculum within a DS program at a North American public R1 institution. In particular, we seek to investigate how TAs acquire and subsequently implement sociotechnical fluency in their pedagogy, and what this might mean for implementing sociotechnical engineering education at scale. The paper contextualizes its study within a new TA professional development course, designed for first-time TAs to practice skills for teaching technical curriculum alongside those for developing inclusive classrooms. The course itself is an implementation of responsible data science curriculum; it leverages culturally relevant pedagogy and growth-oriented educational frameworks to deliver both practical pedagogical training and reflective reading and writing activities. Through this course, TAs reflect on their roles to both foster student technical understanding and create a broader social space for engineering education.