Abstract
Engineering learners must develop skills to design holistic solutions that take competing and complex economic, environmental, and social factors into account. Yet, these skills are not simply cognitive in nature. To develop holistic solutions, engineering learners must develop their affective attitudes so that they can gain an awareness of inequities and injustices in the world so they can then envision themselves as future agents of change with the capability to upend those injustices through their engineering efforts. Put simply, they must develop their critical consciousness to prevent becoming future engineers who inadvertently worsen existing systemic inequities. This paper summarizes the instructional design strategy, assessment, and overall effectiveness of two project-based learning (PBL) units used in a 16-week-long, introductory engineering mechanics class – statics and dynamics. The successive PBL units were designed using principles in backwards-centered design and culturally relevant pedagogy such that small teams of engineering learners could share, negotiate, and critically evaluate their engineering problem solving efforts in response to real-world, ill-structured scenarios. Learner’s reflective writings were thematically analyzed at two points in time to assess in qualitative form the development of their critical consciousness in relation to an a priori 4-level scale for critical consciousness. The results indicate that the instructional design promoted approximately a third of the class to express higher forms of critical consciousness. Notably, the second PBL unit was described by the learners as being more conducive to their critical consciousness development because the scenario was viewed to be more “wicked” than the first PBL unit. The findings in this paper are valuable for engineering educators seeking to advance curricular interventions that positively shape learners’ affective attitudes and have the potential to be adapted and explored in many other engineering mechanics classrooms and institutional contexts.
DOI: 10.18260/3-1-1153-36082
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