2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This empirical research brief describes research examining contextual influences on faculty pedagogical decision making in the context of engineering design education. Recently, scholars have noted a need to educate engineering students on the ways their work can influence people, communities, and society–so-called sociotechnical engineering education. However, implementing sociotechnical design education can be fraught with sociopolitical challenges. For example, state and federal laws barring discussions of issues deemed divisive can indelibly shape how faculty design, or do not design, sociotechnical learning experiences. The purpose of this research was to examine the variety of contextual influences on faculty pedagogies. This research was guided by the following research question:

How do contextual influences shape the pedagogical strategies engineering design faculty adopt in sociotechnical engineering design education?

Conceptual Framework

The Academic Plan Model (APM) described by Lattuca and Stark (2009) provides the conceptual framework for this study. Broadly, the APM describes internal (i.e., departmental and institutional) and external factors that shape the development of academic plans, including the “purpose, content, sequence, learners, instructional processes, instructional materials, evaluation, and adjustment” (p. 4-5) that constitute the learning experiences students encounter in engineering education. Specifically, the APM suggests that internal factors, such as the institutional mission, financial resources, and support for teaching innovations, and characteristics of learners, can play a critical role in curricular design and pedagogical decision making. Similarly, the APM posits that external factors, such as accreditation criteria, local, state, and federal laws, and market forces, can also shape the engineering curriculum and its constituent learning experiences. We utilize the APM to examine how influences at various levels shape faculty decision making about whether and how to include sociotechnical learning experiences in engineering design education.

Data Sources

Data for this study comes from one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with engineering faculty (N = 7). The interview protocol proceeded in three segments. In the first segment, we asked faculty about their academic careers, including their research and teaching experiences and their motivations for engaging in sociotechnical design education. In the second segment, we asked faculty to describe their sociotechnical design courses, including the learning goals they have for students, and the types of learning activities their courses entail. Finally, in the third segment, we asked faculty about the internal and external contextual influences on their instructional design, pedagogical strategies, and decision making.

Findings

This research brief will focus on Segment 2 of the faculty interviews during which faculty describe the learning goals they seek to foster through sociotechnical design education. We find that faculty’s ontological beliefs about the nature of technology is an important frame for their implementations of sociotechnical design pedagogies. Faculty repeatedly pointed to beliefs, such as the idea that all technology is political or that thinking about technology requires thinking about people, as both a key motivation for teaching sociotechnical content and a key learning outcome for students in their courses. Still, faculty hesitate to explicitly integrate their own sociopolitical beliefs into classroom activities for various reasons, including concerns about student participation or professional boundaries.