2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The World is the Product of Story: Using Story to Integrate Socio-Technical Thinking into Engineering Curricula

Presented at Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division (LEES) Technical Session 6

Engineering educators continue to grapple with barriers to integrate socio-technical thinking (STT) into engineering curricula. This paper proposes story, specifically the practice of listening and working with stories, as a meaningful and currently underutilized path for integrating and developing STT. I conceptualize story as cultural transmission that is embodied, relational, and co-created, drawing on literature from education, engineering education, cognitive science, and my experiences in oral storytelling traditions.
This conceptualization aligns with Gladwin and Ellis’ affective-relational-cognitive (ARC) framework for systems literacy. Through this lens, stories help listeners understand and perceive the mutually constituted social and technical dimensions of engineering.
I use this conceptualization in conjunction with the ARC framework to demonstrate the alignment with two cases from the engineering education literature to illustrate this approach: an indigenous storytelling approach for knowledge transfer, and a story intervention to reduce equity gaps and increase belonging. These cases reveal that storytelling practices already support development in ways consistent with the ARC framework. I then extend the analysis by applying the framework to a story shared with me through the oral tradition, demonstrating how an individual narrative can be evaluated and selected to support STT learning outcomes.
Building on these analyses, I argue that educators need not adopt entirely new pedagogical methods, but rather become more intentional the use of stories, particularly by centering listening and reflective dialogue. This approach enables the integration of STT without significant curricular restructuring. Ultimately, this work highlights storytelling as powerful method to shift toward more holistic, socio-technical engineering.

Authors

Brandon Lista University of Toronto
Dr. Emily Moore P.Eng. University of Toronto [biography]

Professor Emily Moore is the Director of Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead) at the University of Toronto. She leads research and teaches on topics such as how engineers lead and learn to lead both as students and in practice. She has published on engineering leadership, equity in engineering, and incorporating systems thinking into complex decision making.

Emily was appointed as Director of ILead in October, 2018 after more than twenty years in industry. Emily started her career at the Xerox Research Centre of Canada scaling up new materials and processes from the lab to manufacturing. In her 11 years at Xerox, Emily learned a great deal about leading teams and developing new products, becoming a manager and Principal Engineer. Emily then spent 10 years at Hatch, a global engineering firm serving the mining, energy and infrastructure sectors. Emily led international teams to develop new product and service offerings and to deliver major projects, first as the Director of Technology Development and then as Managing Director, Water. Emily was also the inaugural chair of Hatch’s Global Diversity and Inclusion efforts. Emily holds a Bachelor Degree in Engineering Chemistry from Queen’s University and completed a Doctorate in Physical Chemistry from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. In 2016 Emily was recognized as one of 100 Global Inspirational Women in Mining and received the SCI Canada Kalev Pugi Award.

Emily continues her involvement with industry by serving on boards, including Metrolinx (2019-2024), Chemtrade Logistics, International Petroleum, and the Canadian Mining Innovation Council.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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