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Developing Global Sociotechnical Competency Through Humanitarian Engineering: A Comparison of In-Person and Virtual International Project Experiences
Abstract
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of engineering educators in the United States and Colombia designed and led a two-week virtual “field session” for engineering undergraduate students that aimed at achieving the same educational outcomes as those from the previous in-country field session. Our NSF PIRE funded Responsible Mining, Resilient Communities (RMRC) project uses multi-country, interinstitutional, and interdisciplinary collaboration to train U.S. engineering students to co-design socially responsible and sustainable artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) systems with mining communities and engineers in Latin America. Drawing from pre- and post-field session student interviews, essays, and survey responses, this article analyzes how the virtual 2020 field session and the in-person 2019 session influenced students’ global sociotechnical competency. We offer a conceptualization of global sociotechnical competency that synthesizes notions of global engineering competency with theories of socially responsible engineering that emphasize problem definition and solution with underserved communities. Our research suggests that whereas many educators raised concerns about the efficacy of virtual formats for student learning and professional development, the 2020 session was effective for enhancing students’ abilities to identify stakeholders and methods to engage them, as well as for using sociotechnical coordination while engaging in problem definition. While the small number of student participants cautions against making broad generalizations, the virtual (2020) and in-person (2019) students experienced similar increases in self-reported empathizing practices with the intended users of their designs; a desire and ability to integrate social concerns into their design; a desire and ability to work with people from different backgrounds; and self-efficacy in engineering. The virtual students were less likely, however, than their in-person counterparts to desire a humanitarian engineering career. While the small number of students raises questions for extrapolating the results of our findings, our research does signal fruitful areas of future research for making humanitarian engineering projects more equitable and effective, even in virtual settings.
... Conversely, STT developed a more critical purpose in engineering education: to raise awareness of the social influences, purposes, and impact of engineering. This critical purpose is highlighted in many recent studies in engineering education linking STT to social justice-related practices (Chen et al. 2023;Jiménez Becerra, Rojas-Alvarez, and Bustamante Salamanca 2022;Leydens, Johnson, and Moskal 2021;Reynante 2021;Smith et al. 2021;Smith, McClelland, and Restrepo 2023). ...
... For example, Andrade and Tomblin (2018) investigated how the integration of social and ethical issues into a sustainability engineering course through stakeholder value-mapping helped improve students' STT. Smith et al. (2021) compared the outcomes of inperson and virtual international project experiences on students' development of global sociotechnical competency, specifically in the context of a project focused on responsible and sustainable artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) practices in Colombia and Peru. Researchers also investigated the characteristics of effective sociotechnical integration through real-world examples and how they can facilitate STT in students (Erickson et al. 2020). ...
... However, most themes discussed by students were dominated by instrumental thinking, such as public acceptance, consumer impact, economic efficiency, and human error. When comparing the outcomes of in-person and virtual international project experiences on students' development of global sociotechnical competency, (Smith et al. 2021) found mixed results within individual students as well. The survey responses indicated that students from both the in-person and virtual offerings perceived increased comfort and confidence in working with diverse stakeholders. ...
Sociotechnical thinking (STT) has recently emerged in response to technical-social dualism. It is defined as the ability to identify, address, and respond to both social and technical dimensions of engineering. As the number of publications on STT increases, so does the need to map the literature. This paper provides a scoping literature review of STT in engineering education, focusing on research purposes, methodologies, findings, and potential gaps. Our examination of 25 papers indicates that research on STT in engineering education covers a variety of purposes and methodologies. Key findings in the literature provide a better understanding of students’ demonstration of and barriers to developing STT, the intersections between STT, engineering identity and culture, characteristics of STT, challenges and opportunities for teaching STT, and how prior knowledge and emotional connections can facilitate students’ development of STT.
... In our research, we are investigating whether program activities enhance students' global sociotechnical competency. Building from prior research [16][17][18], we define global sociotechnical competency as being built from sociotechnical coordination; understanding and negotiating engineering and relevant national or local cultures; navigating ethics, standards, and regulations; and socially responsible engineering [19]. Table 1 provides an overview of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that relate to each of these dimensions, using ASGM as an example. ...
... We found that all three field sessions enhanced students' global sociotechnical competency. In particular, students ended the field sessions with a greater ability to identify the inherent social dimensions of problems that appear to be "technical" and with a greater ability to identify diverse stakeholders [19]. ...
... Global socio technical competency framework, originally published in[19]. ...
The greatest challenges for contemporary and future natural resource production are sociotechnical by nature, from public perceptions of mining to responsible mineral supply chains. The term sociotechnical signals that engineered systems have inherent social dimensions that require careful analysis. Sociotechnical thinking is a prerequisite for understanding and promoting social justice and sustainability through one’s professional practices. This article investigates whether and how two different projects enhanced sociotechnical learning in mining and petroleum engineering students. Assessment surveys suggest that most students ended the projects with greater appreciation for sociotechnical perspectives on the interconnection of engineering and corporate social responsibility (CSR). This suggests that undergraduate engineering education can be a generative place to prepare future professionals to see how engineering can promote social and environmental wellbeing. Comparing the different groups of students points to the power of authentic learning experiences with industry engineers and interdisciplinary teaching by faculty.
... Comprehensive front-end stakeholder needs analysis must recognize stakeholders more broadly beyond individual clients [6], for instance "people, groups, or organizations that are actively involved in a project, are affected by its outcome, or can influence its results [emphasis added]" [4, p. 210]. Fields like humanitarian engineering (HE) have developed their own frameworks for stakeholder needs analysis that 1) include wider, often marginalized communities affected by engineering interventions [8]- [10] and 2) recognize the intertwined social and technical dimensions of engineering projects, or what scholars call "sociotechnical" [11]. This HE approach has resulted from decades of failures in humanitarian projects [12]. ...
... To give a concrete example, in Gibson's thesis research, they found that hydrological systems in rural Colombia are mutually shaped by climate change, agricultural livelihood decisions, and technologies such as chemical fertilizers and machinery [43]. The concept of sociotechnical integration is well represented by the following figure and text from Smith et al. [11], in which holistic sociotechnical thinking is portrayed in the fourth image. For engineers engaging in anthropological, communitybased work it is critical to not only shift one's mindset but also the research approach. ...
... But for the sake of this introductory workshop, and to encourage engineers to diverge from conventional engineering mindsets, we steered engineering students towards "open," "non-leading," "attitude," and "sociotechnical" question types. These are based primarily on ethnographic literature by Spradley and Warren & Karner [46], [47], while the frameworks for sociotechnical questions draw on the work of Smith et al. [11]. ...
Front-end stakeholder needs analysis is increasingly recognized as an essential component of sustainable engineering projects, yet most engineering curricula only cover this topic superficially. Fields like humanitarian engineering have long recognized the importance of stakeholder needs analysis for the success of development interventions, and researchers have developed best practice frameworks for engaging stakeholders that can be applied to systems engineering. These frameworks rely on established social science techniques, such as ethnography and inductive reasoning, and humanitarian engineering principles, such as contextual listening and sociotechnical thinking, to facilitate comprehensive needs assessments. While conventional ethnographies are often incompatible with engineering projects' timelines and expertise, anthropologists have developed methodologies to overcome these limitations, such as Rapid Assessment Procedure. While widely applied in the public health sector, Rapid Assessment Procedure has been seldom integrated with engineering projects. Rapid Assessment Procedure, combined with humanitarian engineering principles, can help researchers quickly gain a nuanced understanding of relevant aspects of complex sociotechnical systems. This paper seeks to introduce systems engineers to Humanitarian Engineering - Rapid Assessment Procedure as a concrete technique for conducting comprehensive front-end stakeholder needs analysis. A case study is presented on the teaching and implementation of Humanitarian Engineering - Rapid Assessment Procedure in a workshop with a group of undergraduate engineering students. We sought to analyze students' perceptions of and learning outcomes from the workshop. Student engagement and learning exceeded expectations, positioning Humanitarian Engineering - Rapid Assessment Procedure as a potentially valuable tool for systems engineers to analyze stakeholder needs to inform system design.
... Fundamentally, the approach of how to integrate such interventions into the classroom has been variable and grounded in the philosophical assumptions of the definition of the sociotechnical. Smith et al. (2021) conducted a study to understand and provide taxonomy to the different approaches in which four unique models are considered for the integration of sociotechnical skillsets for engineering students [5,6]. The integration of communication into engineering is a common feature in all to better develop sociotechnical engineers [6]. ...
... Fundamentally, the approach of how to integrate such interventions into the classroom has been variable and grounded in the philosophical assumptions of the definition of the sociotechnical. Smith et al. (2021) conducted a study to understand and provide taxonomy to the different approaches in which four unique models are considered for the integration of sociotechnical skillsets for engineering students [5,6]. The integration of communication into engineering is a common feature in all to better develop sociotechnical engineers [6]. ...
... Existe un reconocimiento creciente de las dimensiones sociales y técnicas entrelazadas de los proyectos de ingeniería, o lo que los académicos llaman "sociotécnicos" (Bijker, 1997;Smith et al., 2021), para garantizar el éxito, la sostenibilidad y la equidad de los proyectos de ingeniería. La ingeniería sociotécnica desafía la visión de una ingeniería "técnicamente estrecha" que asume que la tecnología y los enfoques analíticos por sí solos son capaces de resolver problemas y obstaculiza las habilidades de pensamiento crítico de los estudiantes de ingeniería (Riley, 2005). ...
... La ingeniería sociotécnica desafía la visión de una ingeniería "técnicamente estrecha" que asume que la tecnología y los enfoques analíticos por sí solos son capaces de resolver problemas y obstaculiza las habilidades de pensamiento crítico de los estudiantes de ingeniería (Riley, 2005). Un enfoque sociotécnico no solo reconoce que los factores "sociales" son tan importantes como los "técnicos", sino que ambos no pueden separarse (Smith et al., 2021). ...
En la educación ingenieril en los Estados Unidos y en la mayoría de los países del mundo, ha existido una separación histórica e ideológica entre el aprendizaje "social" y el "técnico", a pesar de que la práctica de la ingeniería siempre es sociotécnica. La mayoría de los planes de estudio de ingeniería se enfocan en temas técnicos, cubriendo superficialmente los aspectos sociales. Sin embargo, una perspectiva sociotécnica está siendo reconocida como importante para el éxito, la sostenibilidad y la equidad de los proyectos de ingeniería. En los EE.UU, la ingeniería para el desarrollo comunitario (ECD, por sus siglas en inglés) están tratando de cerrar la brecha entre una formación universitaria técnicamente estrecha y la ingeniería como una práctica sociotécnica mediante el desarrollo de pedagogías que incorporan estrategias concretas para la investigación y práctica sociotécnica. Este artículo explorará una de estas estrategias: la traducción de la investigación. La traducción de la investigación aplica de manera efectiva los hallazgos de investigación en resultados prácticos, cerrando la brecha entre el conocimiento académico, el conocimiento común y el impacto en el mundo real. Su objetivo es hacer que la investigación compleja sea accesible y aplicable a diferentes audiencias, fomentando prácticas basadas en evidencia para la mejora de la sociedad. En este artículo, exploramos estudios de caso de traducción de la investigación en un proyecto internacional de ECD entre EE.UU y Colombia de minería de oro artesanal y de pequeña escala (MAPE). Dos estudiantes de posgrado, Gibson y Rojas, desarrollaron proyectos de investigación en ingeniería para comunidades MAPE en Antioquia, Colombia. Las principales preguntas de investigación son hasta qué punto las realidades de los proyectos de investigación de Gibson y Rojas se alinean con un modelo propuesto de traducción de investigación para ECD y cómo el contexto de las comunidades de MAPE en Antioquia influyeron en sus prácticas y modelo de traducción de investigación.
... This shift can be pedagogically transformative, encouraging engineering students to interrogate how problems are framed and whose perspectives are included (Downey, 2015). By integrating diverse stakeholder perspectives, this approach broadens the conception of "we" as problem-solvers, fostering sociotechnical competence (Smith et al., 2021). This is pertinent in holistic AI education, which moves beyond viewing AI as a "collection of disconnected algorithms" (Langley, 2019, p. 9671). ...
This study presents an evidence-based argument for integrating participatory inquiry practices into AI education, using science fiction films as a primary tool for examining human-technology relationships. Through a media-enhanced co-inquiry approach, facilitators and students first explore the entanglements of human-technology interactions before engaging with AI nudges—productivity prompts introduced during time-constrained, interdependent assembly tasks in an experimental setting. A postphenomenological analysis of focus group interview data reveals that students’ collective responses to AI nudges reflect the competitive pedagogical culture of engineering, often reinforcing rigid, task-driven adaptation. However, moments of attunement to material conditions suggest that speculative thinking can serve as a catalyst for renegotiating entrenched norms of engineering rationality. By facilitating the movement of concepts and generating productive friction, speculation disrupts dominant conceptualizations of AI that the engineering community often readily subscribes to. This study highlights the necessity of a cultural shift in engineering education—one that embraces speculative inquiry as a means of fostering sociotechnical reflection and reimagining human-technology relations.
... Given the diversity of approaches to sociotechnical integration, Smith et al. [35] sought to provide a framework to help disambiguate underlying conceptual models for exploring the relationship between social and technical dimensions of engineering competencies. Figure 1 provides an illustration of this framework, highlighting increasing degrees of conceptual integration between social and technical dimensions. ...
... The ESR builds on the three categories established by but also integrates and expands on ethics considerations as well as the relation to the community development and social justice elements presented within. The idea of inseparable aspects of social and technical aspects of engineering and the relationship to engineering skillsets is defined as Global Sociotechnical Competency [15]. ...
... To address societal factors in engineering design, an integration of engineering with humanities topics is a natural choice. Some integration is done in an on-campus course [3] with multiple case studies [4], using a module in a first-year course [5], with virtual interactions with another institution [6], or during a semester-long course with an attached faculty-led component [7]. ...
... As consumers' demand for personalized products increases, engineers must be equipped to adapt design needs to applicable cultural contexts; on-size-fits-all no longer works [13]. Following from prior work showing the promise of virtual international collaboration in engineering education [14], our project, Activa tu Speaking seeks to redress this gap by providing students with an opportunity to work on an engineering design project with international peers to develop solutions relevant to both contexts, as is obtainable in the workforce while developing competency, confidence, and a sense of cultural sensitivity in speaking the primary language of international peers. ...
... Table 2. Assessment results from pilot collaborative international research project. Team member and non-participant scoring of questions related to sociotechnical competency (adapted from [16]). ...
... Muzzurco et al. (2020) developed a tool to evaluate sociotechnical thinking along three primary domains: technology, people, and broader context Their work found that both students and practitioners consider the technological aspects of a design problem, practitioners noted the importance of people and broader contexts more often than students. Smith et al. (2021) outline a framework for what they term "global sociotechnical competency" that describes learning outcomes (i.e., knowledge, skills, attitudes) along different content dimensions such as "sociotechnical coordination" and "navigating ethics, standards, and regulations", to name a couple of content dimensions [21]. This research and others noted above offer a useful means for describing the learning and development goals as it pertains to sociotechnical thinking (i.e., assessing sociotechnical thinking) but do not address how educators might scaffold and support engineers in realizing these outcomes. ...
... Smith et al. [21] provide a concrete starting point for exploring conceptualizations of social and technical intersections in engineering. They note that educators use the term "sociotechnical" in a variety of ways, including to refer to engineering itself, as well as "habits of thinking," "mindsets," and "abilities," or simply as a means to recognize a wider range of "relevant factors" impinging on engineering outcomes. ...
... These sessions provided a viable form of research extension and contributed to the development of students' global socio-technical competency. We join Smith et al. in their definition of global socio-technical competency that includes elements of socio-technical coordination, understanding and negotiating engineering and relevant national and local cultures, navigating ethics and regulations, and socially responsible engineering [80]. To these elements, we add, through extension opportunities, building trust with community members, as they become visible and relevant actors in the sociotechnical ensembles, thus leading to the long-term sustainability of projects. ...
... The authors created a scale assessing how strongly a student connected an incident to cultural learning, inspired by Smith et al.'s scale to assess the complexity of sociotechnical thinking by ranking the degree to which students saw the concepts as interconnected [51]. The authors developed categories for degree of connection to culture and engineering after in-depth review of the data. ...
italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution:
Longitudinal video reflections are a unique approach to assessing student learning in study abroad. This study utilizes this method to understand the experiences of ten engineering students. The results show how their learning experiences changed over time and how the students connected these experiences to culture and engineering.
Background: Study abroad research has demonstrated that students learn through a variety of experiences while abroad, but this research has been limited by narrow assessments, limited longitudinal data, and a lack of connection to engineering. This study uses longitudinal video reflections to explore student experiences in study abroad programs in a holistic way, capturing a wide range of learning outcomes over time.
Research Questions: What types of significant experiences do engineering students abroad discuss in weekly reflection videos? How do engineering students abroad connect their significant experiences to engineering?
Methodology: The critical incident technique (CIT) was used to collect video reflections from ten students for 14 weeks during a semester abroad. Their experiences were characterized using CIT methods and tracked shifts in incident types over time. The results show which types of experiences resulted in students reflecting deeply about cultural learning and engineering learning.
Findings: The experiences students described in their videos shifted from a focus on communication and environmental factors early on to more cross-cultural comparison later in the program. Certain types of incidents resulted in cultural reflection, while others led to engineering learning. Communication incidents often served as a connecting point between engineering and cultural learning.</p
... Some scholars reported a constant declining interest in mining studies worldwide [21] and proposed a focus on sustainable development to generate new competencies and subjects and promote innovative solutions and technologies by emphasizing environmental and social aspects [21]. Literature has reported the positive impacts of incorporating non-traditional mining areas into traditional engineering programs, for example, the case of incorporating artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) into the curriculum of an engineering college in the US [22,23], an approach that was also recommended by organizations, such as USAID and UNITAR as a crucial step towards formalization of the activity [24,25]. In this context, urban mining could also be proposed as an alternative to attract more students into the mining sector. ...
With the understanding that the mining industry is an important and necessary part of the production chain, we argue that the future of mining must be sustainable and responsible when responding to the increasing material demands of the current and next generations. In this paper, we illustrate how concepts, such as inclusiveness and the circular economy, can come together in new forms of mining—what we call inclusive urban mining—that could be beneficial for not only the mining industry, but for the environmental and social justice efforts as well. Based on case studies in the construction and demolition waste and WEEE (or e-waste) sectors in Colombia and Argentina, we demonstrate that inclusive urban mining could present an opportunity to benefit society across multiple echelons, including empowering vulnerable communities and decreasing environmental degradation associated with extractive mining and improper waste management. Then, recognizing that most engineering curricula in this field do not include urban mining, especially from a community-based perspective, we show examples of the integration of this form of mining in engineering education in first-, third- and fourth-year design courses. We conclude by providing recommendations on how to make inclusive urban mining visible and relevant to engineering education.
... We initially grouped students with members of their respective universities and tasked them with developing a CSM of an artisanal and small-scale gold mining site. After students presented their initial CSMs, we rearranged the groups of students so that representatives from each university were present in each group, and we tasked students with developing a second iteration of their CSM [36]. Students were still able to learn about the importance of incorporating different perspectives into their CSM design by observing how their understanding of the problem definition evolved when interacting with people of diverse backgrounds and disciplines. ...
Background
As more universities seek to offer international experiences for engineering students, it is important to design such programs to effectively support student learning abroad. Previous research on study abroad has focused on a limited number of outcomes and therefore failed to consider the diversity of experiences students may have in the same program and the range of learning outcomes they may develop while abroad.
Purpose
We explored student experiences across multiple types of engineering study abroad programs to address the research question: How do the types of significant experiences students highlighted from their time abroad differ based on student and/or program characteristics?
Method
We interviewed 79 engineering students after completing their study abroad programs using the critical incident technique to identify significant experiences from their time abroad. We used multiple rounds of coding to characterize the critical incidents identified by students and then compared the frequency of our main themes across student and program characteristics.
Results
We found that student experiences differed across both personal and program characteristics, in particular students' prior travel experiences, program duration, and the destination's cultural distance from the United States.
Conclusions
Our findings can inform the design of global engineering programs, which should consider the impact of program characteristics on student experiences and employ a variety of pedagogies to accommodate differences in students' needs and prior experiences. We also argue that it is important to consider students' experiences more holistically in research and evaluation of global engineering programs.
Engineering study abroad programs are a novel setting for students to develop systems thinking, which has primarily been taught in formal learning environments. Through a situated learning perspective, we examined the impact of two engineering-focused study abroad experiences on developing students’ systems thinking skills. We conducted secondary data analysis to examine how first-year engineering students (n = 47) at a technical university in the United States (US) connect technical and contextual aspects of engineering in China and the UK/Ireland. The students on the China track drew connections more frequently (81% of excerpts) than those on the UK/Ireland track (49% of excerpts). Students interpreted these connections at the macrosystems level, microsystems level, personal level, and career level. Our study offers a theoretical contribution to the systems thinking framework by offering nuance to the connections students drew between contextual and technical engineering dimensions, while showing that systems thinking can be an important outcome for engineering study abroad programs.
Background
Engineering educators prepare students for responsible, ethical, and socially aware engineering practice by contextualizing engineering in a variety of ways. Recently, ABET and the NAE have prioritized engineers' ability to make judgments considering a variety of contexts and specifically advocated for building engineers' contextual competencies.
Purpose
Educators can often agree that contextualizing engineering work and problems is beneficial, while taking different approaches to that contextualization. It is important for engineering educators to know how their modes of contextualization compare with others, as well as how they define and achieve success.
Scope/Method
This scoping literature review answers two research questions: How are engineering educators contextualizing engineering through their programs, courses, and pedagogies? And what are the justifications, motivations, or desired ends of engineering educators' contextualization? The original search yielded 500 articles from pertinent engineering education venues. After detailed exclusion and inclusion criteria were applied, 104 relevant articles were analyzed.
Results
These remaining articles were sorted into six modes of contextualization: context tools, professional skills, real-world problems, design, sociotechnical thinking, and social impact. The categorization and analysis led to a complex understanding of the multiplicity of contextualization in engineering education.
Conclusions
The wide variety of modes of contextualization results in a variety of bettering strategies, or ways that these forms of pedagogy can improve engineering education, and, in turn, larger engineering contexts. We conclude that engineering content and context are “interactional” and co-constructed, showing how different modes of contextualization demarcate different images of what engineering content and contexts are and ought to be.
Background
Students who are the first in their families to attend college are an integral part of undergraduate engineering programs. Growing bodies of research argue that educators could better support these students if they understood the unique backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge they bring with them to higher education.
Purpose/Hypothesis
The purpose of this article is twofold. First, we identify salient funds of knowledge used by a group of first-generation college students in their educational and work-related experiences. Secondly, we use the funds of knowledge identified in our participants' experiences to create a survey instrument.
Design/Method
A mixed methods approach was used. Ethnographic interview data of six first-generation college students were used to hypothesize constructs and create survey items. Survey data were collected from 812 students. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to verify the underlying theoretical structures among the survey items and hypothesized constructs.
Results
Validity evidence supported a 10-factor model as opposed to the hypothesized 6-factor model. The 10 latent constructs that make up the funds of knowledge instrument are as follows: tinkering knowledge from home, tinkering knowledge from work, connecting experiences, networks from family members, networks from college friends, networks from coworkers, networks from neighborhood friends, perspective taking, reading people, and mediating ability.
Conclusions
Recognizing first-generation college students' funds of knowledge is a first step to creating curricular spaces and experiences that better serve them. A survey scale allows educators to empirically examine how these accumulated bodies of knowledge are transmitted to capital, create advantages in engineering, and provides a useful tool to bridge students' knowledge in the classroom.
Using a creative capacity building (CCB) framework, co-design workshops among artisanal and small-scale gold miners, government officials, NGO representatives, and academics can provide an effective mechanism to identify pressing needs and desires of miners and operators towards formalization. As recently implemented in Peru, one of these workshops identified the need for a single forum (association) to allow artisanal and small-scale miners to represent their voice in front of government and large-scale mining operations and the need for a streamlined simple process for formalization that included mining, environment, health, safety, and employment considerations. A first step towards the single forum was taken with the creation of a social media outlet that allows participants to voice their concerns and share information. Future workshops are needed to cement the creation of the forum and provide specific recommendations for the streamlining of the formalization process.
Evaluating the intercoder reliability (ICR) of a coding frame is frequently recommended as good practice in qualitative analysis. ICR is a somewhat controversial topic in the qualitative research community, with some arguing that it is an inappropriate or unnecessary step within the goals of qualitative analysis. Yet ICR assessment can yield numerous benefits for qualitative studies, which include improving the systematicity, communicability, and transparency of the coding process; promoting reflexivity and dialogue within research teams; and helping convince diverse audiences of the trustworthiness of the analysis. Few guidelines exist to help researchers negotiate the assessment of ICR in qualitative analysis. The current article explains what ICR is, reviews common arguments for and against its incorporation in qualitative analysis and offers guidance on the practical elements of performing an ICR assessment.
Mercury-dependent artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the largest source of mercury pollution on Earth. In this practice, elemental mercury is used to extract gold from ore as an amalgam. The amalgam is typically isolated by hand and then heated—often with a torch or over a stove—to distill the mercury and isolate the gold. Mercury emissions from tailings and vaporised mercury exceed 1000 tonnes each year from ASGM. The health effects on the miners are dire, with inhaled mercury leading to neurological damage and other health issues. The communities near these mines are also affected due to mercury contamination of water and soil and subsequent accumulation in food staples such as fish. The risks to children are also substantial, with mercury emissions from ASGM resulting in both physical and mental disabilities and compromised development. Between 10 and 19 million people use mercury to mine for gold in more than 70 countries, making mercury pollution from ASGM a global issue. With the Minamata Convention on Mercury entering force this year, there is political motivation to help overcome the problem of mercury in ASGM. In this effort, chemists can play a central role. Here, the problem of mercury in ASGM is reviewed with a discussion on how the chemistry community can contribute solutions. Introducing portable and low-cost mercury sensors, inexpensive and scalable remediation technologies, novel methods to prevent mercury uptake in fish and food crops, and efficient and easy-to-use mercury-free mining techniques are all ways in which the chemistry community can help. To meet these challenges, it is critical that new technologies or techniques are low-cost and adaptable to the remote and under-resourced areas in which ASGM is most common. The problem of mercury pollution in ASGM is inherently a chemistry problem. We therefore encourage the chemistry community to consider and address this issue that affects the health of millions of people.
The mining and energy industries present unique challenges to engineers, who must navigate sometimes competing responsibilities and codes of conduct, such as personal senses of right and wrong, professional ethics codes, and their employers' corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the current dominant framework used by industry to conceptualize firms' responsibilities to their stakeholders, yet has it plays a relatively minor role in engineering ethics education. In this article, we report on an interdisciplinary pedagogical intervention in a petroleum engineering seminar that sought to better prepare engineering undergraduate students to critically appraise the strengths and limitations of CSR as an approach to reconciling the interests of industry and communities. We find that as a result of the curricular interventions, engineering students were able to expand their knowledge of the social, rather than simply environmental and economic dimensions of CSR. They remained hesitant, however, in identifying the links between those social aspects of CSR and their actual engineering work. The study suggests that CSR may be a fruitful arena from which to illustrate the profoundly sociotechnical dimensions of the engineering challenges relevant to students' future careers.
Engineering graduates encounter worlds of professional practice that are increasingly global in character. This new reality poses challenges for engineering educators and employers, who are faced with the formidable task of preparing engineers to be more effective in diverse national and cultural contexts. In response, many commentators have proposed lists of attributes or competencies deemed important or even essential for global engineering work. However, such lists have tended to lack explicit grounding in empirical studies of engineering practice, including typical kinds of work situations and related behavioral requirements. As a step toward establishing a more robust definition and developmental theory of global engineering competency, this paper reports results from a wide-ranging literature review on engineering practice in global context. The findings are organized around three main contextual dimensions of global engineering competency: technical coordination; engineering cultures; and ethics, standards, and regulations. Particular efforts are made to relate our findings to prior discussions of what it means to be a globally competent engineer, while further illustrating each dimension by giving examples drawn from interviews with practicing engineers. The paper concludes with a review of ongoing and future work, including how our findings are inspiring creation of situational prompts and activities for both assessment and instructional uses.
B ackground
Engaging future engineers is a central topic in everyday conversations on engineering education. Considerable investments have been made to make engineering more engaging, recruit and retain aspiring engineers, and to design an education to prepare future engineers. However, the impact of these efforts has been less than intended. It is imperative that the community reflects on progress and sets a more effective path for the future.
P urpose
The purpose of this article is to map a new innovation landscape for what it means to engage future engineers. This is a theoretically grounded divergent‐thinking effort to enable a broader space of high impact innovations for engaging future engineers.
S cope /M ethod
A multiple perspectives methodology drawing from innovation, cross‐disciplinary, and boundary work frameworks was used to make visible multiple facets of engaging future engineers. Scholars from diverse communities of thought and discourse were selected to present interparadigmatic perspectives, act as boundary agents, challenge and transform current ways of thinking, and illustrate new opportunities for engineering education innovation.
C onclusions
A new innovation landscape for engaging future engineers is needed, one that emphasizes epistemological development and social justice, new configurations on engineering thinking and connecting to the formative years of development, the entwinement of engineering knowing and being, and mutually informing consequences for opening up a broader space for innovation. We also need to adopt strategies and tools for using a multiple perspectives approach to better understand complex engineering education problems.
This course is an introduction to the relationship between engineering and sustainable community development (SCD) from historical, political, ethical, cultural, and practical perspectives. Students will study and analyze different dimensions of sustainability and the role that engineering might play in them. Also students will critically explore strengths and limitations of dominant methods in engineering problem solving and design for working in SCD. Through case-studies, students will learn to analyze and evaluate projects in SCD and develop criteria for their evaluation.
This book, part of the IEEE PCS Professional Engineering Communication Series, is a thoughtful examination of the role of social justice in engineering education and practice.
This article offers a critical ethnographic analysis of the organization Mines Without Borders (MWB), a student group at Colorado School of Mines. It evaluates the impact the group’s institutional culture has on its effectiveness as a student-led engineering-to-help organization. Through ethnographic and participatory research methods, we sought to understand members’ motivations for joining the organization, their prior knowledge of engineering-to-help, their critiques of the organization, and how well MWB balances service learning for their members and impact on the communities they seek to serve. A participatory photo essay was used to illustrate the perspective of the community members in Nicaragua, and vice versa. The researchers found that members are primarily motivated by a desire to help disadvantaged populations, have little background knowledge on principles of engineering-to-help, see the organization as socially exclusive, and that MWB places a greater emphasis on student experience than community impact. The participative photo essay suggests that MWB members and community members have different perceptions of what constitutes collaboration. This research advances current research on engineering-to-help organizations with the growth of humanitarian engineering programs throughout the world. The results of this ethnography have been used within the organization to enhance its potential effectiveness to benefit students and community members alike.
Engineers will incorporate considerations of social justice issues into their work only to the extent that they see such issues as relevant to the practice of their profession. This chapter argues that two prominent ideologies within the culture of engineering—depoliticization and meritocracy—frame social justice issues in such a way that they seem irrelevant to engineering practice. Depoliticization is the belief that engineering is a “technical” space where “social” or “political” issues such as inequality are tangential to engineers’ work. The meritocratic ideology—the belief that inequalities are the result of a properly-functioning social system that rewards the most talented and hard-working—legitimates social injustices and undermines the motivation to rectify such inequalities. These ideologies are built into engineering culture and are deeply embedded in the professional socialization of engineering students. I argue that it is not enough for engineering educators to introduce social justice topics into the classroom; they must also directly confront ideologies of meritocracy and depoliticization. In other words, cultural space must be made before students, faculty and practitioners can begin to think deeply about the role of their profession in the promotion of social justice.
C ontributors
Indigo Esmonde, University of Toronto; Krishna Madhavan, Purdue University; Wolff‐Michael Roth, University of Victoria; Dan L. Schwartz and Jessica Tsang, Stanford University; Estrid Sørensen, Humboldt University and Aarhus University; Iris Tabak, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
B ackground
The field of engineering education research has seen substantial growth in the last five years but it often lacks theoretical and empirical work on engineering learning that could be supplied by the learning sciences. In addition, the learning sciences have focused very little on engineering learning to date.
P urpose
This article summarizes prior work in the learning sciences and discusses one perspective—situative learning— in depth. Situativity refers to the central role of context, including the physical and social aspects of the environment, on learning. Furthermore, it emphasizes the socially and culturally negotiated nature of thought and action of persons in interaction. The aim of the article is to provide a foundation for future work on engineering learning and to suggest ways in which the learning sciences and engineering education research communities might work to their mutual benefit.
S cope /M ethod
The article begins with a brief discussion of recent developments in engineering education research. After an initial overview of the field of learning sciences, situative learning is discussed and three analytical aspects of the perspective are outlined: social and material context, activities and interactions, and participation and identity. Relevant expert commentaries are interspersed throughout the article. The article concludes with an exploration of the potential for contributions from the learning sciences to understanding engineering learning.
C onclusion
There are many areas of mutual benefit for engineering education and the learning sciences and many potential areas of collaborative research that can contribute not only to engineering learning but to the learning sciences.
Instruments currently being used to measure empathy do not reflect the recent neuroscientific scholarship on mirror neurons
and the importance of self-awareness and emotion regulation in experiencing the fullest extent of empathy. The authors describe
a theoretical framework for the initial development and pilot application of an empathy self-report instrument, the Empathy
Assessment Index (EAI). The EAI is based on a comprehensive definition of empathy that is rooted in social cognitive neuroscience,
developmental psychology, and social work's commitment to social justice. The authors present reliability, concurrent validity,
and data reduction and refinement results from the first administration of the index. Four of the five EAI subscales had excellent
internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Three subscales were tested for concurrent validity. The exploratory factor
analysis identified six factors that explained over 43% of the variance.
Educators in chemical engineering around the world are now working hard to reimagine the field in response to rapid technological change. Real concern exists about the possible loss of cohesion and identity. The main responses focus on restructuring its engineering science core. This concern and attendant strategies are also found in other engineering fields. Might rapid technological change be posing a fundamental challenge to the jurisdiction of engineering work? This analysis reviews the engineering emphasis in different countries on technical problem solving and outlines four contemporary challenges to the corollary claim of control over technological innovation. Responding to these challenges may require abandoning the goal of broadening engineering education, for they indicate not that technical education in engineering is too narrow but may be incomplete. An alternative strategy for adjusting the jurisdiction of engineering work is to formally include the activity of problem definition. The analysis concludes by analysing four characteristics of a model of engineering as Problem Definition and Solution and outlining three types of strategies for integrating problem definition into engineering education.
This paper presents situated learning as a theoretical framework for conceptualising new ways to approach science education. Key constructs associated with this framework, including communities of practice, Discourse and identity, are introduced. I advance an argument to develop classroom communities of practice based on engaged citizenship relative to the negotiation of socio‐scientific issues (SSI). The aim of this approach would be student development of practices and dispositions that better prepare them for active participation in society, particularly in the context of science‐related social issues. Extant literature regarding the effects of SSI interventions is reviewed and synthesised to explore the extent to which the articulated vision has been enacted and to better understand affordances and constraints associated with this enactment. Twenty‐four studies are examined that meet criteria including recency, a focus on empirical investigations of SSI interventions and research rigor. The results of these research reports are categorised in an emergent taxonomy of findings with the following major categories: interest and motivation, content knowledge, nature of science, higher‐order thinking and community of practice. Finally, the paper explicitly considers the value of framing SSI based research and practice in terms of a situated learning perspective.
Engineers have two types of stories about what constitutes 'real' engineering. In sociological terms, one is technicist, the other heterogeneous. How and where boundaries are drawn between 'the technical' and 'the social' in engineering identities and practices is a central concern for feminist technology studies, given the strong marking of sociality as feminine and technology as masculine. I explore these themes, drawing on ethnographic observations of building design engineering. This is a profoundly heterogeneous and networked engineering practice, which entails troubled boundary drawing and identities for the individuals involved - evident in interactions between engineers and architects, and among engineers, especially around management and design. Many engineers cleave to a technicist engineering identity, and even those who embrace the heterogeneous reality of their actual work oscillate between or straddle, not always comfortably, the two identities. There are complex gender tensions, as well as professional tensions, at work here - associated with distinct versions of hegemonic masculinity, with the technical/social dualism, and with what I call 'gender in/authenticity' issues. I conclude that technicist engineering identities persist in part because they converge with (and perform) available masculinities, and that women's (perceived and felt) membership as 'real' engineers is likely to be more fragile than men's. Engineering as a profession must foreground and celebrate the heterogeneity of engineering work. Improving the representation of women in engineering requires promoting more heterogeneous versions of gender as well as engineering.
B ackground
Methodology refers to the theoretical arguments that researchers use in order to justify their research methods and design. There is an extensive range of well established methodologies in the educational research literature of which a growing subset is beginning to be used in engineering education research.
P urpose
A more explicit engagement with methodologies, particularly those that are only emerging in engineering education research, is important so that engineering education researchers can broaden the set of research questions they are able to address.
S cope /M ethod
Seven methodologies are outlined and for each an exemplar paper is analyzed in order to demonstrate the methodology in operation and to highlight its particular contribution. The methodologies are: Case Study, Grounded Theory, Ethnography, Action Research, Phenomenography, Discourse Analysis, and Narrative Analysis. It is noted that many of the exemplar papers use some of these methodologies in combination.
C onclusion
The exemplar papers show that collectively these methodologies might allow the research community to be able to better address questions around key engineering education challenges, such as students' responses to innovative pedagogies, diversity issues in engineering, and the changing requirements for engineering graduates in the twenty‐first century.
This paper offers and tests an approach to conceptualizing the global competency of engineers. It begins by showing that the often-stated goal of working effectively with different cultures is fundamentally about learning to work effectively with people who define problems differently. The paper offers a minimum learning criterion for global competency and three learning outcomes whose achievement can help engineering students fulfill that criterion. It uses the criterion to establish a typology of established methods to support global learning for engineering students. It introduces the course, Engineering Cultures, as an example of an integrated classroom experience designed to enable larger numbers of engineering students to take the critical first step toward global competency, and it offers a test application of the learning criterion and outcomes by using them to organize summative assessments of student learning in the course.
Technology and Society: Building our Sociotechnical Future
- D G Johnson
- J M Wetmore
Johnson, D. G., & Wetmore, J. M. (2008). Technology and Society: Building our
Sociotechnical Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
An exercise to promote and assess critical thinking in sociotechnical context
- J Krupczak
- M Mina
Krupczak, J., & Mina, M. (2016). An exercise to promote and assess critical thinking in
sociotechnical context. Proceedings of the 2016 ASEE Annual Conference &
Exposition. https://doi.org/10.18260/p.26586
Impacts of service-learning projects on the technical and professional engineering confidence of first-year engineering students
- M Siniawski
- S G Luca
- J S Pal
- J A Saez
Siniawski, M., Luca, S. G., Pal, J. S., & Saez, J. A. (2015). Impacts of service-learning
projects on the technical and professional engineering confidence of first-year
engineering students. Proceedings of the 2015 ASEE Annual Conference &
Exposition. https://doi.org/10.18260/p.24234
Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Engineering
- J M Smith
- J C Lucena
Smith, J. M., & Lucena, J. C. (2020). Socially responsible engineering. In D. Michelfelder
& N. Doorn (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Engineering, 661-673.
New York: Routledge.