Minneapolis, MN
August 23, 2022
June 26, 2022
June 29, 2022
Educational Research and Methods (ERM) Division Poster Session
9
10.18260/1-2--40690
https://strategy.asee.org/40690
361
Daniel I. Castaneda is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering at James Madison University. Daniel earned his PhD in 2016 and his Master's in 2010, both in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He previously earned his Bachelor's in 2008 from the University of California, Berkeley. His course development includes civil engineering materials, dynamics, engineering design, engineering economics, first-year engineering experience, matrix analysis, mechanics, probability and risk in engineering, statics, and structural analysis. His research aims to better society by exploring how infrastructure materials can be made to be more environmentally sustainable and resilient; and by exploring how engineering can be structured to be more welcoming of diverse perspectives, which can fuel solutions in challenging societal inequities.
Joi DeShawn Merritt is an Associate Professor of Science Education at James Madison University. Dr. Merritt received her BS in Engineering (Chemical Engineering) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to returning to the University of Michigan and receiving her Ph.D. in Educational Studies (Science Education), Dr. Merritt was a high school chemistry and physics teacher in Charlotte, NC. Her areas of expertise and research focus on: (a) designing science and engineering curriculum materials and assessments to investigate P-20 student learning, and (b) preparing teachers to teach science equitably in the inclusive, culturally and linguistically diverse classroom. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Department of Education. She has authored or co-authored a book, several book chapters and journal articles.
Dr. Joel Alejandro (Alex) Mejia is an Associate Professor with joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering and the Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies at The University of Texas at San Antonio. His current work seeks to analyze and describe the assets, tensions, contradictions, and cultural collisions many Latino/a/x students experience in engineering through testimonios. He is particularly interested in approaches that contribute to a more expansive understanding of engineering in sociocultural contexts, the impact of critical consciousness in engineering practice, and the development and implementation of culturally responsive pedagogies in engineering education. He received the NSF CAREER Award for his work on conocimiento in engineering spaces.
This Work in Progress paper describes preliminary findings of a qualitative study that explored how critical consciousness manifested in engineering learners (n = 33) in a project-based learning (PBL) unit, specifically in an engineering mechanics class context. Typical engineering mechanics curricula emphasize technical concepts, which reinforces to engineering learners that problem-solving efforts are solely technical undertakings that are devoid of socioeconomic, environmental, and political dimensions. This narrow emphasis fuels asocial, apolitical, and apathetic attitudes in engineering, which is glaringly incompatible with the real-world complexity of engineering activities amidst the increasingly multi-ethnic nature of the nation. A multi-part PBL unit was created using the human-centered design (HCD) for communities design framework to foster team-based exploration of an engineering mechanics-based design problem in a sociocultural context. The PBL unit was ill-structured in that a deliberative learning process was required to weigh competing sociotechnical tradeoffs. For each deliverable, students were asked to write reflectively in response to a series of prompts. Two-cycle coding was used to analyze the students’ reflective writing, specifically using Carlson et al.’s 4-stage understanding of critical consciousness as a baseline framework. This data analysis was done to examine the extent to which critical consciousness manifested in engineering learners and how the ill-structured nature of the PBL unit and the HCD for communities design framework impacted that manifestation. We found that students used empathy in performative ways to inform their engineering problem solving efforts and that students’ critical consciousness was mostly manifested at lower-levels of the 4-stage model. This finding suggests that relying upon the ill-structured characteristic in PBL alone is insufficient in developing engineering learners’ critical consciousness. Our preliminary findings highlight the need for engineering educators to find ways to support authentic inspection of social realities depicted in PBL settings in order to develop critical consciousness in engineering learners, who will become the next generation of engineering practitioners striving to solve complex, sociotechnical challenges in our increasingly diverse nation.
Castaneda, D., & Merritt, J., & Mejia, J. (2022, August), Exploring engineering students’ critical consciousness using an ill-structured, project-based learning unit in an engineering mechanics course Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40690
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