nce. We recognize this as a unique set of circumstances and realize that others may not be in a similar position
I think you bring up an important point here about privilege. Do you have any plans for expanding or extending this work to institutions that are different than your own?
Reflections on Radical Change
OK, this section addresses some of the questions I posed earlier as I went through the document. It might help to refer to this section earlier. Also this section hints at some of the challenges of the approach you are taking. I'd invite you to explore this topic more deeply either in this paper or a follow-on paper.
Moreover, the activity provides the elements for the students to critique and challenge, or even transform, dominant ideologies in engineering.
I can see this course as providing a counterpoint to the often "rah rah engineering" that is so prevalent in many of the documents that come out of the engineering community. Is any comparison made to the predominant idea that engineering is a force for positive change in the world so that students can develop their own perspectives on ways engineering both helps and hinders social progress and justice? In other words is this presented as a dialectic?
We developed this course to analyze the world of engineering as portrayed in media, literature, advertisements, and other functional texts [Shor & Freire, 1987].
Great idea!
Engineering and Social Justice course
You have talked about the courses, but I am getting a little lost on how these fit into the larger curriculum.
The final course project brings together the topics o
Could you provide some examples of the course projects and how they are implemented? I find myself sort of hanging since the paper introduces the pieces but not how they all come together in the final project.
This realization leads into a discussion of social constructions, and students are eased into concepts such as social identity theory, intersectionality, and privilege.
What are your students' reactions to these ideas given their demographic and economic status? Are there differences between students who come from different cultural backgrounds?
ociety. In an activity conducted over two consecutive class periods, students choose from a list of articles about different types of technolog
I assume this are real and not fictional scenarios. Could you provide citations to the articles so others can build on your work?
ntly. With the DISJ lens on top of this, the course we offer specifically focuses on users who are often marginalized by society, let alone excluded in engineering (e.g., women, people of color, people with disabilities, people who experience poverty and homelessness, and so
I really like this idea - very powerful.
These interventions revealed we were onto something that worked for students. M
There seems to be a big jump here - from what you did to the claim it worked for students. It may be too early or not in your path to collect and present data in the typical way this is done, but could you discuss your students and your own experiences in offering these courses that led to this claim? I feel that there is something empowering here, but as a reader don't share it.
Author DAC also has applied Statics concepts to the socio-political realm.
This is a really cool idea. Would you be willing to cite and share how to access this data so others could adapt your work here?
n these cases, author DAC strives to examine student’s practices, such as hobbies, and find ways to sustain them within class.
Are any of these examples drawn from students? Is there a way for students to develop their own problems that are relevant in their own culture?
One obstacle faced in these attempts was the feeling that there is no space to add anything new into these already packedcourses
Was there a deliberate discussion on what to leave out? Did this involve other faculty and what were the reactions? This may be outside the scope of the paper, but is one of the factors you allude to that inhibits change. If there was push-back how did you process this both intellectually and emotionally?
I am interested in this personally since I have received very strong push-back on trying to make change that was seen as somehow undermining implicit canons of engineering. My experience, as perhaps that of many others, was…traumatic. It was difficult to process that trauma since it occurred in an environment where allies were difficult to find. I would just like to point out that Murmurations is a space to discuss such issues.
roach. This is not an easy process and requires substantial introspection and self-reflection, but hard work is needed if we are to shift the incredibly entrenched status quo of engineering education.
OK, I think the theory of change is becoming more clear to me. The program seeks to graduate individuals who serve as catalysts for change in their own community by being able both to recognize issues from local cultural perspectives but also have the abstracted knowledge that allows them to act as engineers. So it is a bottom-up and evolutionary model. Is my assumption correct?
2012]. Rather, true decolonization goes beyond surface education reform or actions aimed at freeing the mind.
I think this statement highlights a really important tension I hope will be explored later in the manuscript - pedagogies as a method for economic and political change. This statement seems to imply that indigenous pedagogies may not be as effective without widespread systemic change which is a tall order for university faculty. I don't think that is what is being said, but a reader could draw that conclusion. Again as mentioned in the previous comment more discussion of the underlying theory of change would be helpful.
Cultural competen
Could you better define "cultural competence"? I am reading this as "cross-cultural competencies" since one of the goals of higher education has always been to open student's perspectives to cultures other than their own. Alternatively I could read this as education providing increasing ability to function competently in the student's own culture rather than having to assimilate into the dominant culture.
Both Culturally Relevant and Culturally Responsive Pedagogies seek to counter the neoliberal models of school reform by integrating what is known as asset-based pedagogies [Jacksonet. al, 2018
The term "neoliberal" is often overused and can be broadly applied to a wide range of policies and actions in higher education. Providing a reference or explaining which aspects of neoliberalism you seek to address in this effort would be helpful.
We hope this article will serve as a jumping off point for faculty looking for ways to change the system in which we reside.
I am a little lost on why changing pedagogies is a jumping off point for creating systemic change. While I don't necessarily disagree, it might be helpful to unpack your theory of change for the reader. I am using "theory of change" here as shorthand for the thinking you have gone through that connects the means you have chosen to the desired ends you hope to achieve.
dominant discou
I think I understand what you mean by "dominant discourse" here, but I am not sure. It might help to define this term earlier in the paper so the reader knows what it refers to.
Weagree with these scholars that engineering education has moved further away from confronting its own sociotechnical natur
This phrase "moved further away" makes it sound like engineering education is less aware than it was in the past. I think it is actually more aware of the issues, but perhaps has not make progress on implementing change as quickly as desired.
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test annotation to see if the system is working