STS Postures: Changing How Undergraduate Engineering Students Move Through the World

David Tomblin; Nicole Mogul

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: LEES 4: Understanding and Disrupting Engineering Cultures
Page Count: 15
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41700
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41700
Download Count: 951

Paper Authors

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David Tomblin University of Maryland College Park

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UMD College Park

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Nicole Mogul University of Maryland College Park

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Abstract

Abstract: This paper presents the application of a science and technology studies (STS) teaching strategy we call STS postures (Schumacher 1989; Tomblin and Mogul 2020) to engineering courses. STS postures involve integrating three modes of doing that encourages engineering students to have agency in their education and careers: 1) Body/Mind fusion; 2) Data collection techniques; and 3) Systems thinking skills. STS postures takes a traditionally passive educational environment and introduces movement to the engineering curriculum. Instead of sitting in seats in the classroom, we encourage them to move about. We try out different ways of holding ourselves and moving (literally our bodies) in relation to each other, STS, engineering, education, and technological artifacts. We hold that this change in posture is key to having agency in directing the future of science and technology. The Body/Mind fusion is a corrective to thinking in science and engineering that separates the body from the mind, which reinforces counterproductive ideologies (e.g., depolitizication, Czech 2013) and mindsets (e.g., technical narrowness, “the myth of objectivity,” Riley 2008; Leydens and Lucena 2018) in engineering. Instead, we encourage students to connect intellectual endeavors with emotions, performance, proprioception, interoception, metacognition, and play. Data collection itself is a form of movement that involves students in several BodyMind exercises at once. It helps students to visualize the world as socio-technical systems full of politics, culture, and social relationships. We offer a broad pallet of qualitative data collection techniques that include document analysis, interviews, natural observation, participant observation, focus groups, visual image analysis, and metaphor analysis. These skills help students embrace a systems thinking mindset that involves understanding how to: 1) listen contextually; 2) find ethics in artifacts; 3) make meaning; 4) seek stories about science and technology’s past, present, and future; 5) locate power in systems; 6) ask STS questions; and 7) host STS parties. We reason that if students can take some of these data collection skills and mindsets into their engineering classrooms, internships, and careers, we will have given them life-long tools of interruption for responsibly interrogating their interactions with science and technology. This paper provides several STS Posture activities applied to a required engineering ethics course.

Citation
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Tomblin, D., & Mogul, N. (2022, August), STS Postures: Changing How Undergraduate Engineering Students Move Through the World Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41700

TY - CPAPER
AB - Abstract: This paper presents the application of a science and technology studies (STS) teaching strategy we call STS postures (Schumacher 1989; Tomblin and Mogul 2020) to engineering courses. STS postures involve integrating three modes of doing that encourages engineering students to have agency in their education and careers: 1) Body/Mind fusion; 2) Data collection techniques; and 3) Systems thinking skills. STS postures takes a traditionally passive educational environment and introduces movement to the engineering curriculum. Instead of sitting in seats in the classroom, we encourage them to move about. We try out different ways of holding ourselves and moving (literally our bodies) in relation to each other, STS, engineering, education, and technological artifacts. We hold that this change in posture is key to having agency in directing the future of science and technology. The Body/Mind fusion is a corrective to thinking in science and engineering that separates the body from the mind, which reinforces counterproductive ideologies (e.g., depolitizication, Czech 2013) and mindsets (e.g., technical narrowness, “the myth of objectivity,” Riley 2008; Leydens and Lucena 2018) in engineering. Instead, we encourage students to connect intellectual endeavors with emotions, performance, proprioception, interoception, metacognition, and play. Data collection itself is a form of movement that involves students in several BodyMind exercises at once. It helps students to visualize the world as socio-technical systems full of politics, culture, and social relationships. We offer a broad pallet of qualitative data collection techniques that include document analysis, interviews, natural observation, participant observation, focus groups, visual image analysis, and metaphor analysis. These skills help students embrace a systems thinking mindset that involves understanding how to: 1) listen contextually; 2) find ethics in artifacts; 3) make meaning; 4) seek stories about science and technology’s past, present, and future; 5) locate power in systems; 6) ask STS questions; and 7) host STS parties. We reason that if students can take some of these data collection skills and mindsets into their engineering classrooms, internships, and careers, we will have given them life-long tools of interruption for responsibly interrogating their interactions with science and technology. This paper provides several STS Posture activities applied to a required engineering ethics course.
AU - David Tomblin
AU - Nicole Mogul
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - STS Postures: Changing How Undergraduate Engineering Students Move Through the World
UR - https://peer.asee.org/41700
DO - 10.18260/1-2--41700
ER -