Engineering and Social Justice: In the University and Beyond

Introduction

IN THE UNIVERSITY AND BEYOND

Caroline Baillie, Alice L. Pawley, and Donna Riley

INTRODUCING THE TEXT

Many of us who have had the occasion to describe to others the work we do at the intersection of engineering and social justice have often received a surprised response: Oh! I hadn’t thought of those two as related before. Or more bluntly, Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Why is engineering seen by so many as either having nothing to do with justice, or worse, as related in some way to injustice? Perhaps it is not surprising when the daily news brings stories of unnatural disasters, of human and ecological tragedy facilitated by technological failure, or even by technological successes implemented exactly as intended.

The team of editors who have put this book together sees huge potential in engineering to serve society—all of society, globally and locally, and in more responsible and respectful ways than in the past. However, in order to accomplish this in an increasingly just and equitable way through mode and content, practice and process, we need not only to review our own thoughts and beliefs about the purpose and practice of engineering, but also systematically change things about the profession itself.

We recognize that engineering is not the only profession that needs to make these transformations in order to do work in right relationship with local and global communities. However, as the authors of this book speak as and to engineers, and because many of us directly educate future engineers, it is this profession that we aim to transform through our work. We hope by being transparent and even self-critical about our attempts to do so, we may inspire other engineers as well as other professionals to reflect on these issues in their own work.

All three of the editors and indeed all contributors to this volume are academics—professors, postdoctoral scholars, and doctoral students—writing what is intended to be a user guide for others interested in enhancing social justice through their engineering teaching, research, and service. We know that the use of the term guide is problematic in that it suggests we know the way forward. We do not. We have our own views and positions on our journeys toward social justice. However, what we do have is a critical facilitative approach, by which we hope to enable others to ask questions, question assumptions, and begin conversations. All editors and authors in this book have different styles and disciplinary approaches and are concerned about our profession for a variety of reasons. Some of us have been working on social justice in engineering for many years; others of us are in the early stages of exploring how we might bring together engineering and social justice in our research, teaching, or service. We are very aware that we do not represent well the diversity in ways of knowing and being that exist in the world, but we are evermore encouraging the input of those who do. In this growing movement, there is space for all kinds of folks at different points of this process, including those whose total experience of doing engineering and social justice has been to pick up this book.

EDITORS’ APPROACH TO THE TOPIC

The three editors who came together to frame and focus the work also have different backgrounds and experiences. We begin with a short narrative from each of us describing how we came to work on a book like this, and how we situate ourselves in relation to engineering and social justice.

CAROLINE BAILLIE:

In 2003 I arrived in Canada to take up a new job at Queens University. Within weeks of my arrival, I started to question why it was that everyone told me my materials engineering research should have as its main goal economic benefit for Canada. I found that odd, as I thought at that time my main goal was to reduce environmental impact. Then I began to realize that no one had ever asked me who was intended to benefit from my work; this was assumed. Canada? One homogeneous group of people? I started to listen to the words of Ursula Franklin, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto, who asks of any engineering project: Who benefits and who pays? Sustainability was the new buzzword—and although we knew that this meant considering economic, environmental, and social impact, for the first time I noticed that the latter of these three was often ignored. I started to ask the question: What would engineering look like if we put the social first? What would engineering look like if we framed it around social justice? I began to research this question—asking political economists, historians, and sociologists what they thought. I tentatively ran a conference on Engineering and Social Justice in 2004, which launched the Engineering Social Justice, and Peace Network (esjp.org) that recently hosted its seventh annual conference in Colombia. The network has grown in number and disciplinary complexity, working at the juncture between education, research, and practice. This book has emerged out of the network and a perceived need to support the growing number of engineering academics interested in social justice.

ALICE L. PAWLEY:

I was a graduate student in industrial engineering who was trying to use psychological theories based on industrial populations to understand how to redesign engineering education to be more effective. My departmental seminars were organized around the ideas of making workers work more efficiently through designing their jobs in different ways—to make workers feel like they had more control over their work, so that they then had increased motivation to work, and so on. I remember a sense of disquiet about engineers—likened unto managers—tricking workers (not engineers) into working harder, as the workers themselves did not benefit significantly more from their increased labour, while the corporation itself did.

I remember talking about these issues with my mom in the kitchen, and her pulling out a piece of paper to describe to me different kinds of research. She talked about basic research, where physical, natural, and social scientists try to figure out how the world works. She described applied research as the realm of engineers, taking the insights gained in basic research and figuring out how to use them to do stuff. These two ideas were familiar to me. But then she talked about critical research, done by people who applied particular theories about the world to the critique of both basic and applied research, to remind all of us to ask ourselves whether these outcomes were where we wanted society to go and why. I had never heard of critical research before, but I now see my work as critical research, and I find myself explaining to my engineering colleagues both what that is and what value that brings to engineering research as a field. Since then I took a women’s studies class focused on critiques of science and technology, and I learned that the scientific and engineering methods I had been taught were not the only ways of viewing the world and in contrast actually oppressed others’ alternative views. Additionally, I came across Donna Riley’s paper on using liberative pedagogies in an engineering thermodynamics course, which made me think the feminist theory I was learning and my passion for engineering education could be combined. I met Caroline through an invitation initiated because of my work describing feminist approaches to engineering education with the Society of Women Engineers, and I learned of her work connecting engineers with theater. Upon meeting Donna at a conference, she hooked me into a community exploring engineering and social justice issues, through which I reconnected with Caroline. It has been a roller-coaster since to keep up with them, and I am honored to undertake this book with them.

DONNA RILEY:

I was drawn to work on social justice issues as a high school student. I attended a student summit on nuclear disarmament, wrote my senator about US aggression in Central America, and worked the press room at the first all-city youth AIDS awareness dance in my hometown. I started an environmental club at my high school, and it was this interest that I wanted to pursue in college. My father, being an engineer, steered me toward engineering, and I pursued courses and cocurricular activities in environmental studies and science, technology, and public policy. Gender discrimination and gender violence on my campus drew my attention both within and outside of engineering, and I worked as an activist on LGBTQ issues. I struggled all along to put my activist work together with my academic work, but even in the environmental area, where one might expect a close connection, my campus activism and my research and coursework did not intersect, and could not, lest the scientific research be discredited as political. In graduate school I worked on risk assessment and risk communication, which was a hair’s breadth away and at the same time miles away from my street outreach on needle exchange and harm reduction with injection drug users. Ultimately it was coming to the work of teaching that enabled me to connect engineering and social justice. I employed critical, radical, feminist, and postcolonial pedagogies in my approach to engineering education. Through this work I first met George Catalano, who introduced me to a group of scholars already networking around engineering, social justice, and peace. Finding this community of kindred spirits has been an amazing source of support and encouragement, and our collaborations have brought renewal and a particular sense of purpose to my professional life.

PROCESS OF CREATING THIS BOOK

A subset of the authors of the work in this book came together around the topic of engineering and social justice in a workshop held at Purdue University in the fall of 2009. Additional authors who have participated to varying degrees in the Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace Network were invited to create a balance in focus among research, teaching, and service in this volume. Both the workshop and the review process for this volume were geared toward helping authors develop our own critical lenses.

These chapters represent a snapshot in time, and they capture where each author is in grappling with fitting engineering and social justice together, with re-forming our own thoughts and approaches from what we were taught toward what we hope is increasingly just. We hope the process of writing and revising after critical review has increased all authors’ knowledge and experience with social justice approaches, and we know this process is always incomplete, as social justice is itself a work in progress. Further conversation, additional critical challenges to our work from readers, and a continual re-shaping of our approaches are welcome, invited, and necessary.

THEMES IN THE BOOK

Several common themes have emerged through the writing of this anthology, despite the different backgrounds and approaches taken by each author. These themes illustrate some key characteristics of the work of putting engineering together with social justice: diversity of theoretical approaches; the role of criticality and reflexivity; the recurring question of who benefits and who pays; and the tension between the internal and the external in working for change.

THEORY

One of the big differences when working across disciplines is the use of theory. What theory is, what it looks like, and how it represents itself within the research process or the written product can vary enormously. Some engineers say that social scientists do not have theory, just ideas; at the same time, some social scientists bemoan the lack of any theoretical framing when engineers write. Despite these difficulties in recognizing theory across disciplines, theory does retain certain similarities across all domains. It is a way of thinking, a structure, a set of ideas that have been written about in the past, have been around long enough to have hardy descendants (after Ravetz, 1971), and often have been published. This theory is then applied to the new work—for example, a new set of ideas, evidence from data collected experimentally, or from literature. The theory might predict what we should expect—that is, define for us our hypothesis—or it may take the form of a lens through which we analyse our current project, or both. What differs, between and within disciplines, is not in fact the theory, but the epistemology behind the theory—the way of knowing—or what we think knowing means. For example, in engineering texts authors often assume a positivist stance where they believe they are searching for the truth using particular methods and standards of evidence. They know that the theory may be incorrect and that a new one may take its place, but multiple correct conceptions were considered impossible until Einstein came along. Nevertheless, for many engineers, the idea of seeing through the lens of a particular set of ideas about the world, knowing this to be only one of many lenses that may be applied, all of which are valid, can seem an extraordinary thing to do.

In the chapters that follow, authors use theory in various ways, including creating new theory, modifying or borrowing theory from other disciplinary fields and bringing it to new use in engineering education research, or challenging existing theories. Each of them adopts a particular set of ideas through which they develop their arguments. Some examples: Alice L. Pawley uses feminist boundary theories to guide her analysis of what constitutes engineering; Caroline Baillie frames her reflective assessment of her own research using a lens of justice and post-development theory; George Catalano adopts complex systems science and Berry’s principles of an evolving or unfolding universe to question our responsibilities as engineers. Each author positions himself or herself and identifies what he or she sees from that position. There is no question that it will take a revolution to transform existing engineering publication practice to accept the place of the author within the research and to experience first person texts. However, it might be possible on the way to encourage more engineering authors to question basic assumptions about presumed ideas and to state their theoretical position, and ideas about the nature of the knowledge they are creating.

DIMENSIONS OF CRITICALITY

Just as the chapters in this book vary in their theoretical approaches, so too do they vary in how they engage the notion of criticality. While the project of engineering and social justice can (should) be positioned as a critique of the profession and academic discipline of engineering, and the practice of engineering education, it is also important for us as authors to be critical of our own work in this endeavor. Indeed, social justice as a concept presses us to ask, what is right? and who is right? What makes them right?—inherently embodying critique. While incorporation of critical theory as a practice and in the Chicago school tradition is unusual in engineering education research (let alone engineering research), we do find instances of self-critique or self-questioning more frequent than one might imagine from a fairly conservative profession. Perhaps we should not be surprised, as some of even the most conservative engineers define engineering with the maxim: Scientists ask the question, ‘why?’ Engineers ask the question ‘why not?’ (Petroski, 2009). But we should be more systematic and reflexive in articulating our critiques. What is the subject of our critical gaze? What are our methods to critique existing or our own work? What evidence do we use to critique others’ or our own work? In this anthology, each chapter’s author(s) address the question and scope of social justice in engineering within their piece, employing different dimensions of criticality.

One set of papers addresses the question of how to improve access and success of underrepresented students in engineering education programs, critically engaging structures in higher education. Lisa A. McLoughlin notes that access to a four-year education is easier for those with power and resources, and that community colleges provide educational opportunities to those excluded by existing four-year public and private universities. Michele L. Strutz and her colleagues note that students of low socioeconomic status can also bring diverse perspectives to engineering, and the authors ask how we might structure our engineering educational systems to better support the educational success of such students. George D. Ricco and Matthew W. Ohland prompt us to question our assumptions about engineering students as a body, and they offer ideas for how to rethink our conceptions of what students are like. Each of these papers takes as its critical lens the assumption of how and who we construct educational institutions for, and how those populations then construct our discipline of engineering as an inclusive or exclusive one.

Another set of papers critically explores the subject of engineering research—both the subject itself and the practice of engineering, of engineering education, and of research as a culturally situated endeavor. Matthew W. Ohland and his colleagues argue for new ways of quantifying students’ socioeconomic status in engineering education research as more accurate representations of the idea of class. In a more direct link, George Catalano notes the difficulty of understanding the concept of turbulence in fluid mechanics, and he argues that using social justice and complexity theory as lenses may help advance our understanding of this technical idea. Monica Cardella and her colleagues argue that the way engineering design processes lead engineers and engineering students to relate to the subjects and users of the eventual design is problematic, and the authors present the case that human-centered design can be a better way to meet the needs of non-designers while improving the education of engineering students. They prompt reflective engineers and practitioners to ask of themselves at what point of the design process are people as users and citizens incorporated, and how can they be involved earlier, for the improvement of the process and the outcome alike. Pawley argues that engineering academic practice sets limiting boundaries around appropriate content of engineering in such a way that the historical work of women and people in Third World contexts is functionally excluded, and she asks academics to re-conceptualize their embodiment of these boundaries in their daily practice as engineers.

A final set of papers turns its critique inward, noting the practice of writing the piece itself is a form of critical reflection. Baillie questions her own motives and governing theories of work and economic participation both in her sabbatical work with Argentinian cartoneros and now writing about them for new audiences. Riley describes a critical narrative and tour she has crafted in response to institutional narratives about the value of a new engineering building on campus, and she is explicit about how the writing of the piece is a form of catharsis for her.

WHO BENEFITS AND WHO PAYS?

Another clear motif for this book could be articulated by Franklin’s (1999) question, who benefits and who pays? The chapters by Ohland and his colleagues, Strutz and her colleagues, and McLoughlin assume that higher education in general (and engineering education in particular) provides benefit to all participants, and thus aim to extend these benefits to poor, working class, and first-generation college students. Cardella and her colleagues speak about the benefit of community service-learning to the student body—but we are left with the question as to whether the community might benefit or indeed pay high costs for this service (VanderSteen, Hall, & Baillie, 2010). In Baillie’s chapter she considers whether there is any real benefit from her research and teaching, to the cooperatives she is working with in Argentina, and how she knows this, and on whose terms, and how we find this out. Pawley points out that mainly it is men who have benefited so far, both as professionals and as recipients of the engineering work by the way it is constructed and constituted. In her alternative tour of a building at her institution, Smith College, funded by Ford Motor Company, Riley points out the benefits to corporations and universities at the expense of local community members, and Catalano goes further to suggest that not only do we need to consider less powerful and marginalized groups, but also we need to consider non-human species.

INTERNAL/EXTERNAL

In social justice movements, group members wrestle with questions of defining themselves—who is considered a member of the group and who is an outsider? As a matter of strategy and tactics, is it better to take an approach for change from within an unjust system, or to approach change from outside? While in the big picture sense, social justice advocates are quick to recognize the value of multiple approaches to change, these internal-external tensions necessarily pervade particular campaigns that seek to put forth a specific perspective from one group. This tension between internal and external is manifest in several chapters of this book.

Pawley’s work on boundaries in/of engineering is focused perhaps most directly on what is internal, what is external, and how the line between the two is constructed along lines of gender. Catalano takes up the task of transforming the field of fluid mechanics, balancing insider and outsider perspectives. As a fluid mechanician himself, Catalano is the consummate insider. However, he draws in perspectives from well outside the field, writing for a wider audience than colleagues studying fluid behavior. Ricco and Ohland consider the classroom itself as a site of social justice struggle, where students define themselves against professors they seek to hold accountable to ideals espoused in lecture. Students form groups that critically analyze and at times resist power within this environment.

Ohland and his colleagues take up the question of who is included in engineering, examining the issue of class and access to engineering education. They analyze the institution of higher education from within, identifying injustice using tools that are conventionally accepted and respected: quantitative analysis of large data sets. Strutz and her colleagues and McLoughlin also take up the issue of class and examine access to engineering education. Both seek to make the external internal, by listening to and amplifying the experiences of working class and first-generation college students, and the experiences of community college students.

In universities, the town-gown divide is a central internal-external dynamic; three chapters address university-community relationships. Cardella and her colleagues consider engineers’ participation in service-learning courses, the lessons learned by crossing the university-community divide, and the promises and limitations of this model for social justice. Baillie reflects on international community-based research that challenges prevailing economic systems, where a number of internal-external dynamics are confronted around university-community, culture and language, economic class, and perspectives on political economy. Riley describes her attempt to transform her own institution’s responsibilities in relation to a campus construction project that impacted a neighboring community and local labor groups.

AN INVITATION

This book is itself a representation of the diverse lenses and approaches needed to address questions of engineering and social justice. It is not a book that needs to be read from cover to cover. In the style of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, we invite you to enter each chapter as a plateau of experience, move into the space of new ideas, and allow yourself to reflect on your own practices and how they might be reframed toward the goal of enhanced social justice.

REFERENCES

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). Thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Franklin, U. (1999). The real world of technology. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press.

Petroski, H. (2009, January 25). Want to engineer real change? Don’t ask a scientist. Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012302351.html

Ravetz, J. R. (1971). Scientific knowledge and its social problems. New York: Clarendon Press.

VanderSteen, J. D. J., Hall, K. R., & Baillie, C. A. (2010). Humanitarian engineering placements in our own communities. European Journal of Engineering Education 35(2), 215.

Teaching and learning

BRINGING SOCIAL JUSTICE INTO THE ENGINEERING CLASSROOM

Chapter 1

DEVELOPING HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN PRACTICES AND PERSPECTIVES THROUGH SERVICE-LEARNING

Monica E. Cardella, Carla B. Zoltowski, and William C. Oakes

Engineering students (and practicing engineers) can fall into the trap of either imagining that they themselves can accurately and adequately represent their end-users’ needs and wishes, or forgetting the end-user entirely. As engineering students and practitioners focus on the technical, logistical, and economic aspects of their design, they can not only neglect their users and clients, but also ignore the greater social context and ramifications of their work. Students and practitioners cannot promote social justice in their engineering design work if they do not consider people’s needs and lived experiences throughout their design process. The focus of this chapter is on helping students realize all of the people involved in and affected by their design decisions and in doing so, to develop a human-centered approach to design. To accomplish this, we might teach students user-centered/human-centered design concepts in courses using traditional pedagogies, such as lectures, laboratories, and instructor-as-client projects. Alternatively, students who participate in service-learning design courses learn through authentic design experience with an actual client (i.e., someone other than the instructor) who has a real need (and an intention to adopt/use the end design). Our hypothesis is that students develop a more sophisticated understanding of users, stakeholders, and other people affected by design decisions as well as the larger social implications through service-learning experiences. Additionally, we hypothesize that students are better able to develop a conceptual understanding and appreciation of the importance of human-centered design through service-learning experiences that promote more socially just practices.

INTRODUCTION

Engineers possess the knowledge and skills to profoundly impact society and human life—in both positive and negative ways. Engineering solutions such as the modernization of sewage systems in the twentieth century, which lowered the mortality rate of the population significantly, have tremendously benefited society. However, there is a concern about how to educate engineers to develop ways of practice that are also socially just. Recently the National Academy of Engineering (2008) has identified 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering, which included providing access to clean water, managing the nitrogen cycle, and restoring and preventing nuclear terror. These challenges represent opportunities for positive impact on social well-being. There also remain countless untapped opportunities for engineers to address pressing needs for infrastructure, goods, and services in developing contexts. Paterson and Fuchs (2008, p. 1) describe this as development for the other 80%. Doing so demands a different set of competencies as compared to designing for traditional markets. Without understanding the complexity of the problem, particularly the social aspects (e.g., cultural practices, possible unintended uses by the people adopting the solution), there is great opportunity for engineers’ solutions to damage rather than help. Within the context of usability engineering, a common principle is using consistent symbols and icons to communicate ideas. For example, on computers a trash can is a consistent icon used to indicate that the files moved to the trash can will be thrown out or deleted. Another common symbol is a red skull and cross bones used to communicate that something is dangerous. However, applying these symbols to indicate that a bag of rice was unfit for human consumption led to severe illnesses when these bags of rice were transported to a country unfamiliar with these consistent symbols (Casey, 1998).

IDEO, a global leader in design, states on their website (2009):

We believe in the power of design thinking to create significant social change. As perhaps the purest example of our human-centered approach, Social Impact at IDEO enables design as a tool to address such global social issues as poverty, health, water, economic empowerment, environmental activism, and the need for basic services. Design for social impact seeks to incite transformational change in underserved, underrepresented, and disadvantaged communities.

Human-centered design (HCD) is a critical avenue for students to develop empathic design skills. In this chapter we describe HCD as an approach engineers can use to understanding how engineering solutions might be adopted and adapted and otherwise impact people. We believe that this is an important part of being able to practice engineering in a socially just manner, and we provide our rationale for this. The chapter focuses on HCD more than on socially just engineering, then, as we aim to share our insights and expertise on HCD, and we recognize that we are not experts in the field of engineering for social justice. Much of the chapter is then devoted to the process of developing an HCD approach—how engineering students might learn HCD. We discuss this in terms of the content (or curriculum), assessment, and instructional approach (Pellegrino, 2006) associated with learning HCD. Finally, we present a brief overview of research currently underway that investigates the potential for service-learning to facilitate students’ comprehension of HCD.

DEFINITION OF HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN PROCESSES FROM THE LITERATURE

Design has been defined as a systematic, intelligent process in which designers generate, evaluate, and specify concepts for devices, systems, or processes whose form and function achieve clients’ objectives or users’ needs while satisfying a specified set of constraints (Dym,