Abstract
Although the need for an engineering education oriented to public welfare and social justice has been acknowledged for many years, the efforts to put it in practice seem insufficient and a culture of disengagement still appears dominant. The aim of this article is twofold: (1) to examine beliefs and motivations of university faculty towards the social responsibility of engineers, and (2) to develop pedagogical principles to deal with the culture of disengagement in engineering. A survey-based quantitative study was conducted among faculty from a university in Chile. A factor analysis revealed two dimensions of social justice in their conceptions, with significantly higher scores for the first one: environmental/ethical versus public/community. Additionally, faculty value less the humanities and social sciences than other non-technical topics in the curriculum. Results, for this university, confirm the prevailing cultural features reported elsewhere. Some guidelines to counteract the cultural pillars of disengagement are based on critical thinking, context-based learning or situated practice, and interdisciplinary learning. These are illustrated in a course on Systems Simulation.
Highlights
Significant efforts have been made in the last two decades to innovate the way engineers are trained
As Cech [1] points out, engineering students’ interest in public welfare concerns decreases over the course of their college education, perhaps the engineering education process does not teach students to reflect upon the social impact of their work
As Riley [3] suggests, moving away from an apolitical or value-neutral view of engineering work requires teaching engineers to think critically, autonomously, understanding the context surrounding engineering problems, and taking time to discover what the right problem is, among other skills. These skills do align with engineering programs’ declared learning objectives, as well as with outcomes proposed by engineering accreditation boards such as learning outcomes 2 and 4 by ABET [4]
Summary
Significant efforts have been made in the last two decades to innovate the way engineers are trained. As Riley [3] suggests, moving away from an apolitical or value-neutral view of engineering work requires teaching engineers to think critically, autonomously, understanding the context surrounding engineering problems, and taking time to discover what the right problem is, among other skills. These skills do align with engineering programs’ declared learning objectives, as well as with outcomes proposed by engineering accreditation boards such as learning outcomes 2 and 4 by ABET [4]
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