2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

There is increasing agreement about the importance of integrating learning opportunities that foster students’ understanding of the impact of engineering decisions on people, communities, and society. So-called “sociotechnical engineering education” is thought to prepare students for an engineering field that is increasingly interdisciplinary and globalized, which requires engineers to develop critical evaluation skills beyond those that apply fundamental engineering science concepts. However, several contextual factors, such as institutional support for reform, the social and cultural context of an institution, and state and local legislation barring faculty from teaching about “divisive issues,” can support, or inhibit, faculty pedagogies aimed at developing sociotechnical engineering learning opportunities. As a result, universities, engineering programs, and the faculty that make up these programs, implement diverse pedagogical strategies for fostering engineering students’ sociotechnical design repertoires.

The purpose of this ongoing research project is to understand how contextual influences at the individual (e.g., faculty values and beliefs), institutional (e.g., department and institutional mission and resources), and regional (e.g., state and local policy) levels shape faculty pedagogical decision making, including the learning goals they adopt and the activities they plan, in engineering design education. Moreover, our goal is to examine how different contextual influences and resulting pedagogical strategies shape students’ learning outcomes in sociotechnical engineering design education.

In this paper, we describe an integrated framework for examining faculty pedagogical choices surrounding sociotechnical design education, as well as students’ learning in sociotechnical engineering design education. We intend to use Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice to curate a community of scholars and educators who are developing and implementing sociotechnical design education across contexts. Moreover, we seek to understand the various influences on faculty pedagogical decision making by drawing on the Academic Plan Model, “makes explicit the many factors that influence the development of academic plans in colleges and universities” (Lattuca & Stark, 2009, p. 5). Additionally, we draw on situated learning theory and the Weimer Framework for Student Resistance to examine patterns of student engagement and resistance to sociotechnical design education. Our goal is to study the manifestations of students' learning in their design thinking, engineering judgments, and decision making to contribute new knowledge about the pedagogical strategies that foster engineering students’ sociotechnical design repertoires.

Finally, in this paper, we introduce a mixed-methods approach to understanding these two strands–faculty pedagogical decision making and student learning and resistance. We will describe the development of interview, focus group, and observation protocols for studying faculty pedagogies and student learning, as well as new survey measures that capture student access to, engagement in, and resistance to sociotechnical design education.