Incorporating feminist pedagogy into the engineering learning experience

Abstract

A framework is presented for implementing feminist pedagogy along with demonstrative examples from engineering curricula.The framework for incorporating the values of feminism into the learning experience focuses on three aspects: 1) learning management strategies, 2) assessment and evaluation strategies and 3) strategies for critiquing existing power structures and the engineering process. Feminist pedagogy strategies suggested by others include cooperative learning, providing students a voice in classroom management decisions, structuring student interactions to facilitate all students' participation, having students participate in designing evaluation rubrics and assigning projects that require more than technical skills. A unique feature which feminist pedagogy offers to engineering education is the critique of power structures in relation to the engineering process. For example, the following questions can be addressed: How are engineering processes influenced by the historical frameworks of their development? How are decisions made? Who makes decisions? Who benefits from the decisions? What values do they reflect?

Effective teaching practices: Preliminary analysis of engineering educators

“…These models offer useful examples that could guide engineering educators, particularly as we strive to make our approaches accessible to an even broader range of students. Examples of researchers applying such alternative pedagogies to engineering exist [14,15,16,17,18]. Both the urgent need to reform engineering education and the future of engineering rely on the growing ability of scholars to continue to make such contributions.…”

An Intervention to Address Gender Issues in a Course on Design, Engineering, and Technology for Science Educators

“…The DET approach creates more context and opportunities for tool use than do the science curricula currently found in schools. The DET approach also shares many of the characteristics of feminist and liberative pedagogies [71][72][73] such as the creation of community, reflection, independent inquiry, and connection [74]. As noted by one of our students, the steps in the design process are nearly identical to the description of inquiry in the national standards, with the difference being an engineering context.…”

Special session: Re-imagining engineering education: Feminist visions for transforming the field

“…It is our hope that this invitation to a transformative visioning process may create new entry points for peers that have been involved in diversity efforts and are seeking ways to be involved in next steps, as well as peers who previously have not engaged with education efforts around gender in engineering. We anticipate participation from a core group of FIE participants that have attended workshops in recent years on feminist pedagogy and other related topics [5][6][7][8][9]. We hope that by making explicit the links between feminism and social justice, we can attract people who have previously participated in either or both types of special sessions in past years.…”