FROM CRITICAL THINKING TO REFLECTION TO CITIZEN ENGINEERS

Abstract

What does it mean to be a “responsible engineer”? The question has been asked throughout history, including during times that were fraught with challenge, but the problems awaiting engineering students in Canada in 2021 are arguably unprecedented in their complexity. Technologically difficult problems resulted in recent advances such as the World Wide Web and 5G mobile communications, but today’s challenge derives not only from the global scale of man-made environmental problems and their impacts, but from lack of agreement around appropriate mitigation strategies and on the need to act at all. The engineering students of today must develop solutions to problems that have newly acknowledged and highly contentious human factors. In the Canadian context, new policy is emerging from Canada’s recognition that it must reconcile the harms of past policies towards Indigenous peoples. This recognition has created a discourse around equity that will shape the landscape in which graduates will practice. In preparing young engineers to navigate technological and social complexity, and to equip them to find personal fulfillment in an uncertain landscape, a reinvigorated emphasis on critical and relational thinking is required. In 2019 and 2020, students in a fourth-year class in Sustainability, (which includes a study of law, policy, and sustainability reporting metrics) participated in multiple group exercises that asked them to explore multiple facets of problematic or politically current issues. These learning activities sought to support a transformative learning experience in which students would come to recognize their ability to contribute as citizens to the development of responsible public policy. In these exercises they examined opposing positions and assessed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks, associated with each. That there was no RIGHT conclusion was emphasized. The only criteria for assessment was depth of exploration and logical chaining of evidence. Students learned about cultural perspectives from an Indigenous educator, and as they explored the diversity of viewpoints around the question of pipeline expansion in Canada. A final exercise asked students to reflect on the meanings of responsible policy and practice and how they would operationalize sustainability thinking.