Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This book presents an effective solution to three issues. The first has to do with a missing framework to put engineering in the service of social justice, to date that framework has remained under-researched and unelaborated. Second, no book-length work has described the implications of such a social justice framework for multiple components of the engineering curriculum: specifically, the engineering sciences, engineering design, and the humanities and social sciences, particularly professional communication. Finally, of all the research focused on how to recruit and retain students from underrepresented groups in engineering education, the majority focuses on extracurricular activities. This book is unique in presenting ways to create viable cultural spaces so social justice can complement learning primarily within the curriculum. In so doing, engineering educators can recruit and retain excellent, underrepresented students who yearn to see a curriculum animated by a strong sense of social purpose and meaning. Using social justice as a catalyst for curricular transformation, the book aims to increase enrollment among underrepresented groups, lessening lingering gender, class and ethnicity gaps by showing how the power of engineering knowledge can be harnessed to serve the underserved and address social inequalities. This book aims to transform how educators think about--and enact--the engineering curriculum. In so doing, those educators will reshape how tomorrow's engineering professionals perform engineering for social justice.
Synopsis
Shows how the engineering curriculum can be a site for rendering social justice visible in engineering, for exploring complex socio-technical interplays inherent in engineering practice, and for enhancing teaching and learning
Using social justice as a catalyst for curricular transformation, Engineering Justice presents an examination of how politics, culture, and other social issues are inherent in the practice of engineering. It aims to align engineering curricula with socially just outcomes, increase enrollment among underrepresented groups, and lessen lingering gender, class, and ethnicity gaps by showing how the power of engineering knowledge can be explicitly harnessed to serve the underserved and address social inequalities. This book is meant to transform the way educators think about engineering curricula through creating or transforming existing courses to attract, retain, and motivate engineering students to become professionals who enact engineering for social justice.
Engineering Justice offers thought-provoking chapters on: why social justice is inherent yet often invisible in engineering education and practice; engineering design for social justice; social justice in the engineering sciences; social justice in humanities and social science courses for engineers; and transforming engineering education and practice. In addition, this book:
- Provides a transformative framework for engineering educators in service learning, professional communication, humanitarian engineering, community service, social entrepreneurship, and social responsibility
- Includes strategies that engineers on the job can use to advocate for social justice issues and explain their importance to employers, clients, and supervisors
- Discusses diversity in engineering educational contexts and how it affects the way students learn and develop
Engineering Justice is an important book for today's professors, administrators, and curriculum specialists who seek to produce the best engineers of today and tomorrow.