CAREER: Contextual Influences on Faculty Pedagogies and Their Impact on Student Learning

Tufts University, Medford MA

Investigators

Abstract

Recent scholarship has examined the ways engineers, both in our working processes as well as in the new technologies we produce, can reify and exacerbate systemic inequities in American society. As a result, scholars have called on engineering educators to develop pedagogies for catalyzing students’ sociotechnical design thinking competencies in engineering design education that develop students’ competencies for understanding and mitigating the role of engineering in systemic inequities. However, several contextual factors, such as institutional support for reform, the social and cultural context of the institution, and state and local legislation barring faculty from teaching about “divisive issues” like race/racism, gender/sexism, and issues facing LGBTQIA+ people, can support, or inhibit, reforms aimed at sociotechnical engineering design education. Thus, the purpose of this project is to examine the contextual influences on faculty pedagogical decision making related to sociotechnical design thinking, teaching, and learning, as well as how contextual supports and barriers impact student learning. This project will develop communities of practice within and between higher education institutions to better understand how faculty have responded to context-sensitive barriers, as well as leveraged context-specific supports, to develop and implement design pedagogies for fostering engineering students’ sociotechnical design repertoires.This project’s integrated research, education, and dissemination plan will foster change in the ways engineering design education is delivered by supporting knowledge sharing and innovation within institutions, as well as capacity building across institutions, for engineering design educators. Guided by the Academic Plan Model, which posits a set of sociopolitical factors internal (e.g., institutional mission, faculty governance, student characteristics) and external (e.g., local, state, and federal government, accreditation bodies) to the institution, this research will employ a multi-method research design to examine the influences on faculty pedagogical decisions in engineering design education, as well as how those decisions shape students’ learning and resistance in sociotechnical design learning activities. This work is guided by the following research questions: (1) How do contextual influences, such as sociopolitical restrictions, shape the pedagogical strategies engineering design faculty adopt to teach students about addressing social inequalities in engineering design processes? (2) What educational activities catalyze students’ sociotechnical design repertoires in engineering design contexts? (3) How is student resistance to sociotechnical engineering design manifested in engineering design education, and what context-specific strategies can faculty adopt to mitigate student resistance? To answer these questions, this project will employ a variety of research methods, including interview and focus group data collection to understand faculty pedagogical decision making, ethnographic methods to understand student learning in sociotechnical engineering design education, and survey data collection to examine student resistance across contexts, to achieve three broad objectives. In Objective 1 this project will convene faculty across institutional contexts for one-on-one, in-depth interviews, as well as group pedagogical reviews designed to facilitate knowledge sharing and pedagogical ideation and innovation. In Objective 2 will entail an ethnographic research study examining students’ engagement in sociotechnical design learning activities across contexts. Finally, in Objective 3, to build capacity internally within and across institutions for sociotechnical design education, this project will develop a Sociotechnical Design Institute for training engineering design faculty, as well as a Sociotechnical Design Toolkit with online resources for engineering design faculty (e.g., readings, classroom activities, assignment prompts), design researchers (e.g., surveys, observations protocols), and industry professionals (e.g., design review rubrics). Findings from this project will foster knowledge sharing, as well as pedagogical innovation, in engineering design education nationally. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.