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- Convenors:
-
Fernando Herrera García
(Escuela Politécnica Nacional)
Elena Durán
Gabriela Onate (CEDIA)
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- Chair:
-
José Gómez
(Universidad de Cuenca)
- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
Multiple educational experiences portray the potential of STS concepts to enrich engineers' abilities to design, implement, and reflexively evaluate their work. This panel invites exploring different methodological and theoretical approaches used to incorporate STS Pedagogies into STEAM education.
Long Abstract:
STS has built an understanding of social and technological complexity as a product of the intricate interaction between different socio-technical assemblages, cultural factors, and power dynamics. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, STS has been able to connect the technical components traditionally associated with STEAM fields with the sociocultural elements involved in the history, contemporary context, and professional practice of STEAM (Johri, 2011; Mitcham, 2009). This approach has generated multiple pedagogical initiatives combining STS with STEAM fields creatively.
For instance, STS has insisted on how the vulnerability and risks of technologies and infrastructures, and the disasters associated with them, cannot be disarticulated from the social vulnerabilities in which these infrastructures are framed (Gaillard, 2019; Sutley et al., 2017; Velho & Ureta, 2019). In this way, STS-informed education could lead to training professionals with abilities to design and build more resilient technologies and infrastructural projects at social and technical levels. Evidence shows that incorporating an STS approach into STEAM curriculums strengthens students' sociotechnical skills, improves their understanding of the impacts of their work on society, and develops their capacity to work interdisciplinarily (Cacéres, 2006; K. Ferrando, 2014; Marshall et al., 2012; Ramallo et al., 2019; Schlierf, 2010).
This panel invites papers and presentations that explore the multiple paths to pedagogically integrate STS approaches, combining them with STEAM fields and beyond. We are particularly interested in presentations that address the challenges of doing so in situated scenarios from diverse regions of the world while also describing the effects and theoretical and methodological reflections raised from these experiences. We invite presenters to reflect on how these interventions can trigger transformative changes, in the short and long run, around how science and technology are enacted and how STEAM practitioners can promote more reflexive approaches to their role in shaping our societies moving forward.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Yogita Suresh (Shiv Nadar University)
Short abstract:
The paper will present an analysis of the integration of STS scholarship in Engineering Education, using ethnographic insights from the classroom as a case study to discern the challenges, outcomes, and possibilities of the introduction of STS scholarship to engineering students.
Long abstract:
Engineering education in India is one of the most sought-after degrees, next to Medicine. As of 2023, India has 5860 engineering colleges, with over 23 lakh students securing admission to various engineering colleges nationwide in 2023. (AICTE 2023). The market for engineering education in India is one of the largest in the world. Given these numbers, paying attention to the engineering curriculum and the context and networks of knowledge production in these institutions is crucial.
As a Ph.D. student researching this field, I found that my interlocutors perceived their scientific work in fragments, which at times were completely disassociated with the social and socio-technical realities. While the built environment of these institutions contributes towards this fragmented approach, a critical analysis of the curriculum along with viable methodologies to integrate STS scholarship, is imperative. This will not only help bridge the so-called gap between the Social and the Scientific in these institutes but also contribute towards producing more socially useful/good technologies that are sensitive to the larger context in which it is produced.
My paper presentation will discuss ethnographic insights from two STS courses offered to engineering students at two different universities, one public and one private. These courses are Gender and Technology and Environmental Sustainability: Policy Dilemmas and Technological Solutions. In doing so, I will trace how engineering students thought about their work and place in society differently after taking these courses and discuss possible suggestions for the integration of STS scholarship with engineering curricula.
Gregorio Páez (CEDIA) Luis Contreras (Technical University of Ambato) Jorge Albuja-Sánchez (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador) Oscar Alvear Jorge Augusto Toapaxi Alvarez (Escuela Politécnica Nacional)
Short abstract:
This paper proposes the development of a course model with an STS approach, based on the analysis of case studies, through which technical and social perspectives are combined with a reflective pedagogy through the collection of experiences and perceptions of various actors in the civil engineering.
Long abstract:
This paper presents the results of the research "Interdisciplinary curriculum design, from an STS approach, to promote complementarity between Civil Engineering and Social Sciences in the Higher Education System of Ecuador". It has been developed in three stages. The first consisted of analyzing the curricula of the 24 universities that offer Civil Engineering in Ecuador. In order to identify the interest and knowledge of the STS field, as a second step, authorities, teachers and students of these universities were interviewed, as well as international experts who have innovated the educational practices of civil engineering with an STS approach. Likewise, a systematic literature review was carried out to gain in-depth knowledge of the experience of successful cases.
This has allowed us to identify the scarce presence of interdisciplinary subjects in the country's curricula. Therefore, the curricular design formulated to fill this gap seeks to integrate the technical and social aspects through a pedagogical approach based on problem solving and the analysis of controversies. Specifically, the case study that will be problematized is the sinking of houses in the Solanda neighborhood of Quito caused by the construction of the subway in the city.
Timothy Reedy (University of Maryland-College Park) Christine Alexander (University of Maryland) Kuan-Hung Lo (University of Maryland College Park)
Short abstract:
This study reveals engineering education downplays emotions, impacting the preparation of engineers for ethical and societal challenges. It explores student perceptions on emotion in design, showing a bias towards economic and end-user considerations over their own emotional experiences.
Long abstract:
Engineering education often implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) signals to aspiring engineering students that their emotions are irrelevant and unimportant, thereby sidelining a key component of decision-making essential for producing socially responsible and culturally competent engineers. U.S. engineering education and engineering culture (Downey, 2008) has traditionally emphasized impartiality, objectivity, and a clear delineation between the technical knowledge and the social aspects (i.e., socio-technical dualism) that inform the discipline (Cech, 2013; Leydens and Lucena, 2009; Riley, 2008). This study sought to explore students’ attitudes and dispositions towards emotion in ethical decision making.
Our study was conducted over a semester in an engineering ethics course that uses STS Postures (Tomblin & Mogul, 2018), a framework that integrates analytical and pedagogical strategies such as critical role-play, bodymind exercises, and emotionally experiential place-based activities. Qualitative data, in the form of pre and post surveys, underwent a process of open-coding to reveal patterns and motifs. Although analysis is ongoing, preliminary findings indicate that understandings of emotion are captured by economic logics intertwined with engineering ideologies such as free market consumerism, positivism, and the myth of objectivity, and end-user preferences while overlooking, downplaying, or dismissing the emotional experiences of engineers themselves within the design process.
This paper responds directly to Latour's (1991) charge of "retying the Gordian Knot," aimed at reversing the MindBody Cartesian split, by discussing pedagogical interventions and considerations for practitioners seeking to reattach just one thread of this historically frayed rope.
Seiko Ishihara-Shineha (Jissen Women's University) Yuki Fukuyama (Kwansei Gakuin University)
Short abstract:
Serious games have attracted attention as a tool for cultivating a diversified perspective on STS issues. This paper is an educational practice research in Japan on a course for undergraduate students to design and develop a serious board/card game on STS issues.
Long abstract:
Tremendous advances in science and technology have increased the complexity of the social implications of science and technology (hereafter referred to as STS issues). In recent years, serious games have attracted attention as a tool for cultivating a diversified perspective on STS issues. A serious game consists of using entertaining and enjoyable techniques to achieve a serious purpose. This paper is an educational practice research in Japan on a course for undergraduate students to design and develop a serious board/card game on STS issues in Japan. Since 2016, students in the relevant class have designed and developed serious games on topics such as climate change, genome editing, reproductive medicine, artificial intelligence, food risks, and femtech.
In designing and developing serious games, there is an inevitable process of modeling the system based on understanding the essential content of the topic. For example, it is necessary to identify the diversity of frames and actors, the trade-off structures and dilemmas involved in the system, and how to incorporate them into the game system. Through classroom practice and research to date, we have found that serious game design classes have the potential to effectively promote awareness and understanding of the diversity of framing and dilemma structures around STS issues. In this paper, we present practical insights from the course and discuss the opportunities and challenges of using the game design process to think about STS issues.
Zahar Koretsky (TU Eindhoven) Anna Wieczorek (TU Eindhoven) Jonas Torrens (Utrecht University)
Short abstract:
We review literature on engineering education to propose principles for a transformative education that better enables engineering graduates to address societal challenges, such as the climate crisis, in their career.
Long abstract:
Universities of technology are increasingly called to support society in addressing energy and climate crises, global inequality, biodiversity loss and other issues that collectively can be called societal challenges. Existing literature suggests reasons why current engineering education, at least in the Global North, is largely not responding to this call. Literature suggest that to respond to it, new types of engineering education would be needed which embodies principles that are in many ways radically different from the current education system. Such education would enable engineering graduates to address societal challenges in their career. In line with several strands of education literature, we refer to such education as ‘transformative’.
The aim of the paper is to report on a review of the literature on new principles for education in search for an answer to the following question: what principles distinguish transformative engineering education from non-transformative, traditional education? We ground our answer to this question with a discussion of the aims of a transformative education, i.e. societal challenges. We identify different types of challenges, distinguishing societal ones from others, and conduct an integrative literature review to identify principles of transformative engineering education.