Search

Service-learning (SL), especially in engineering, is a promising way to engage and support local communities, educate students as holistic citizens and professionals, and strengthen the connection between higher education and society. However, within engineering education, SL as a pedagogy has yet to reach its full potential as a transformational pedagogy. To further our understanding of why SL in the context of engineering remains limited, this contribution characterizes: 1) beliefs about engineering implicit in students’ descriptions of their SL experiences, and 2) the ways in which students’ beliefs manifest within the context of SL in engineering. We used an inductive, qualitative approach to analyze focus group and interview data. Our data includes rich, contextual descriptions of SL experiences, which enabled us to generate insight into students’ implicit beliefs about engineering and how they manifest in SL contexts. We found that students predominantly draw on three implicit beliefs about engineering when engaged in SL experiences: 1) Engineering is predominantly technical, 2) Engineering requires deliverables or tangible products, and 3) Engineers are the best problem solvers. These beliefs often manifested problematically, such that they promote university-centered and apolitical practice while reinforcing social hierarchy, leading to community exploitation in support of student development. This study produces empirical evidence that such implicit beliefs are a mechanism that limits the potential of SL by hindering community-centric and justice-oriented practice. However, some students demonstrated their ability to disrupt these beliefs, thereby showing the potential for SL as a pedagogy in engineering to surface implicit and counterproductive beliefs about engineering and achieve SL goals. The beliefs that are salient in SL and the concrete ways in which they manifest for students have implications for how SL is practiced in engineering and the experiences of both students and partner communities. These beliefs impact the extent to which the socio-political elements of the service are addressed, the quality and extent to which the engineering solution is aligned with social justice, and the extent to which SL is university- versus community-centric. The implications of these findings lead to recommendations to, and the need for future research on, how engineering educators might explicitly design SL curricula to identify, address, and dismantle problematic beliefs before they manifest in problematic ways in SL contexts.

Engineering design decisions have non-trivial implications, and empathic approaches are one way that engineers can understand and translate the perspectives of diverse stakeholders. Prior literatur...

This work presents the quantitative findings from a multi-method study investigating service-learning as a platform to promote empathy growth within engineering undergraduates. Qualitative results from this study have previously demonstrated the potential of service-learning activities to support the development of empathy by leveraging group dynamics, interactions with the community, and self-reflection. A repeated measures design using the Davis’ Interpersonal Relativity Index (IRI) was administered to the 14 undergraduate student participants before and after a service learning experience. Exploratory quantitative findings indicating the potential of service-learning and the use of reflection as a platform for the growth of empathy, particularly within the IRI constructs of empathic concern and perspective taking, are presented. These findings, along with associated limitations, demonstrate the importance of further investigation into the use of service-learning, and other community-engaged student learning (CESL) activities as platforms for empathy development among undergraduate engineering students.