Engineering Justice

Transforming Engineering Education and Practice

Jon A. Leydens, Juan C. Lucena

• Publisher: Wiley-IEEE Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781118757314
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technik & Maschinenbau
• Subtopic: Elektrotechnik & Telekommunikation

Shows how the engineering curriculum can be a site for rendering social justice visible in engineering, for exploring complex socio-technical interplays inherent in engineering practice, and for enhancing teaching and learning

Using social justice as a catalyst for curricular transformation, Engineering Justice presents an examination of how politics, culture, and other social issues are inherent in the practice of engineering. It aims to align engineering curricula with socially just outcomes, increase enrollment among underrepresented groups, and lessen lingering gender, class, and ethnicity gaps by showing how the power of engineering knowledge can be explicitly harnessed to serve the underserved and address social inequalities. This book is meant to transform the way educators think about engineering curricula through creating or transforming existing courses to attract, retain, and motivate engineering students to become professionals who enact engineering for social justice.

Engineering Justice offers thought-provoking chapters on: why social justice is inherent yet often invisible in engineering education and practice; engineering design for social justice; social justice in the engineering sciences; social justice in humanities and social science courses for engineers; and transforming engineering education and practice. In addition, this book:

• Provides a transformative framework for engineering educators in service learning, professional communication, humanitarian engineering, community service, social entrepreneurship, and social responsibility
• Includes strategies that engineers on the job can use to advocate for social justice issues and explain their importance to employers, clients, and supervisors
• Discusses diversity in engineering educational contexts and how it affects the way students learn and develop

Engineering Justice is an important book for today's professors, administrators, and curriculum specialists who seek to produce the best engineers of today and tomorrow.

1
Social Justice is Often Invisible in Engineering Education and Practice

Indeed, prioritizing certain “technical” features (faster, smaller, cheaper vs. quality or sustainability) over others is a social and political choice at its core. Thus, the notion that engineering work can somehow be separated from the social world is itself a cultural frame for understanding what engineering is.

—Dr. Erin A. Cech, 2013 [1, p. 71]

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The Introduction to this book provided an overview of pressing issues for engineering education and the engineering profession that constitute exigencies for making social justice (SJ) concepts visible in engineering education. If that curricular integrative approach is viable and engages students, why is it not more widespread? This chapter engages that question by describing general and engineering-specific literature on sources of resistance to making SJ visible. In fact, most engineering educators do not realize that they may currently render invisible SJ dimensions that are inherent in the engineering concepts they teach, simply by teaching engineering courses as they themselves were taught and/or by (un)consciously enacting one of the engineering ideologies or mindsets described below.

Readers may have noticed that we are not claiming that SJ should be integrated into engineering courses as (yet another) added curricular component. Rather, we claim that at present, SJ dimensions that are inherent in engineering systems, models, designs, and more are rendered invisible. Reasons for that exclusion are discussed in three parts. First, we explore generic forms of resistance to rendering SJ visible. The next two sections, respectively, focus on engineering-specific ideologies and mindsets in engineering, which serve as barriers to entry for SJ.

1.1 Generic Barriers to Rendering Social Justice Visible

Rendering SJ visible can be difficult for engineering educators because they first need to confront normalcy and superiority inherent in unconscious or implicit biases, and generally, those topics have not figured prominently in an engineering education. Among scholars who study privilege and oppression, most acknowledge that blatant acts of discrimination and oppression still emerge but are more rare than in the past [2]–[4]. Increasingly common today are more subtle forms of discrimination and oppression, along with a growing awareness of them.

1.1.1 Normalcy

As background to understanding subtle forms of discrimination, normalcy and superiority are bedrock concepts [5]. As Goodman explains, normalcy raises the question of which social norms and values are considered dominant cultural norms. By definition, such norms vary by culture, so we refer below to US cultural norms, given the context in which we teach and do most of our research. Such cultural norms are shaped heavily by dominant cultural groups, which exercise influence on dominant ideologies as their prevailing values become normal. By becoming perceived as normal, such values become reference points for all alignments with—or deviations from—cultural norms. Cultural norms are then reified—often unconsciously—in institutional settings, shaping policies and practices, including in universities, companies, and other organizations. For instance, Goodman notes that white (often Christian), middle-class, heterosexual norms pervade the larger US culture and shape norms within multiple organizational settings. Whereas those norms generally go linguistically unmarked, Goodman notes, deviations from them are marked. For instance, we would likely not call George Bush a former “male president” or Bill Gates a “white businessman,” yet we might say “female president,” “Latino businessman,” or “lesbian teacher” even in cases in which the gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation of those individuals is irrelevant to their capabilities [6, p. 18]. Similarly, in engineering contexts, we would likely not refer to astronaut Neil Armstrong as a “male engineer” or Bill Nye the Science Guy as a “white engineer” (though both earned engineering degrees), yet we frequently hear phrases such as “female engineer” or “Hispanic engineer,” even in cases in which gender or ethnicity is irrelevant to individuals’ capabilities or to the context. In short, normalcy goes unmarked, and deviations from the cultural norm are often marked.

1.1.2 Superiority

Not only are dominant groups’ values considered culturally normal, they are also generally considered superior. For instance, Goodman notes that Standard English, which is not a second dialect in many middle- and upper-class homes, is considered not just more socially accepted but superior to other dialects [6]. The social class advantages of learning Standard English from the cradle onwards are often invisible—unless this was not the dialect with which an individual was raised. As another example, heterosexual nuclear families are not just more common (although they are becoming less so); they are also often considered inherently better than a gay or lesbian family.

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Not only are dominant groups’ values considered culturally normal, they are also generally considered superior.

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Superiority becomes more visible when the same characteristic is applied to dominant and oppressed (or less dominant) groups. For instance, excellent engineering work is inherently heterogeneous and multifaceted, yet excellence in communication, teamwork, and design—often depicted as “feminine” aspects of engineering—tend to be sidelined compared to what are often seen as more “masculine” areas like technical prowess and technicist skills (see Chapter 5) [7], [8].

1.1.3 Unconscious Biases

So what do normalcy and superiority have to do with engineering education? Normalcy and superiority can contribute to and reify unconscious or implicit biases. Such biases occur when we unknowingly make judgments or express preferences about a person's talent, capability, etc. based on characteristics that may be irrelevant to such judgment or preferences (e.g., race, class, gender, sexual orientation, (dis)ability status). Over time, such biases can make a workplace more homogenous and, for some, unwelcoming.

Unconscious biases are commonplace in STEM workplaces. For instance, a common cultural norm is to assume that men are better at math and technical skills than women. That norm can be so prevalent that men and women unconsciously internalize it. For example, in one study, even when math skills were identical, both men and women were twice as likely to hire a man for a job that required math [9]. In another study, science faculty at research-intensive institutions were asked to evaluate fictitious student applications that varied only in terms of a male or female name. Male and female scientists ranked male applicants higher than females in terms of competence and “hirability,” even though these applicants had identical credentials [10].

Emphasizing that diverse teams engage in better decision making, proactive efforts to address and/or promote awareness of unconscious bias have been accentuated in the entire tech sector, especially regarding women and underrepresented racial minorities [11], [12] as well as within specific companies such as Google [13].

1.1.4 Personal and Broader Societal Framing

However, a key difficulty with confronting issues of cultural normalcy and superiority—and forms of cultural privilege or oppression that may emanate from them—emerges from how people frame such issues. In our experiences with thoughtful, engaged engineering students, many experience a two-phase framing process that necessarily begins with personalization.

In some ways, framing broad issues of social structure in a personal way makes sense, because they are abstract and may not often ring true in our own lived experiences, especially if we are not conscious of having experienced privilege and/or oppression ourselves. But personalization is also fraught with dangers that must eventually be transcended for discussions of privilege and oppression to become productive: specifically, as Johnson points out, people can become bogged down in guilt (“I didn't mean to oppress anyone”) and/or blame (“Check your privilege” or “Your success is due to [privilege X or Y]”). For some, such feelings of guilt and/or blame may be common at first, but become unproductive if they persist. They can result in anger and alienation—further polarizing the very people who need to engage in thoughtful dialogue [2].

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But personalization is also fraught with dangers that must eventually be transcended for discussions of privilege and oppression to become productive.

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Lived experiences are an important starting place but can also serve to perpetuate denial (“There are no individuals with disabilities where I work, so I don't see this as a widespread problem.”) or dismissal (“I do not see any sexist practices in my office. We are all treated the same here.”). But even if people manage to move beyond an individual-referenced guilt and/or blame framework, another—often more significant—barrier can hinder progress: identity threat. For many of us, acknowledging the existence of social privilege and oppression can threaten our sense of ourselves, especially our career accomplishments and the accomplishments of friends and relatives who may share many of our same privileges. As discussed below, if we hold to meritocracy, whereby individuals are rewarded in proportion to their hard work and sacrifice, acknowledging privilege calls a meritocratic system into question. That is, recognizing that privilege—and not hard work and sacrifice alone—may have been an asset that leveraged one's chances for various career opportunities and for realiz...