Faculty interpretations of sociotechnical thinking in their classrooms: Techniques for integration

摘要: Engineers consider both social and technical elements within the problem spaces in which they work [1]-[3]. Yet, engineering education often better prepares students to address technical issues within well-defined technical problem spaces, with relatively less emphasis placed on social or sociotechnical elements [4]-[6]. Traditional technically-focused curricula might therefore foster the habit of solving fully-formed problems that require no problem-definition stage including community and other stakeholders [5],[6]. This disparity can lead to negative consequences for the profession and society (for example, suboptimal solutions) as well as for engineering professionals, who may feel ill-prepared to address sociotechnical elements of their professions [3]. For example, Cech found that engineering students become more disengaged with public well-being during their time in engineering programs, suggesting that these programs’ separation of technical and social impact students’ impressions of their own futures as engineering practitioners [7]. A key element of our research is that new concepts are therefore needed to help engineering students develop sociotechnical thinking, or the ability to identify, address, and account for “the interplay between relevant social and technical factors in the problem to be solved”[8](p. 1). For a more in-depth motivation of the need for sociotechnical integration in engineering education, we refer readers to [8].Developing engineering courses that address sociotechnical thinking can be challenging, especially for faculty who were themselves trained in more traditional, technically-focused curricula. Some faculty within …