Feminism, Robots, and the Body in Becoming an Engineer

• In Event: Roundtable Session 51
  In Roundtable Session: Situating Learning and Becoming in Practice

Abstract

Objectives
Scholarship in engineering education suggests that engineering practice aligns with the principles of technical rationality (Schön, 1983; Stevens et al., 2015), thus supporting a decontextualized and depoliticized approach to the social problems engineers address (Cech, 2013). We explore one form of technical rationality, the separation of the body from embodied experience, in an undergraduate engineering program.

Theoretical framework
We build on existing scholarship on engineering education that highlights the centrality of technical rationality in engineering pedagogy and practice (e.g., Blockley, 1992; Cross, 2001; D. Schön, 2002), as well as recent efforts to privilege the body and embodiment in education broadly (Beckett & Morris, 2001; Klemmer et al, 2006; O'Loughlin, 2006) and in engineering education in particular (Johri & Olds, 2011; Lindgren & Johnson-Glenberg, 2013). Because the study takes an interest in gendered engagement with engineering, and because bodies and their experiences became relevant during robotics design projects, we also draw on traditions of embodiment in feminist theory (Braidotti, 2013; Butler, 1988; Diprose, 2005; Kehily, 2001) and in transhumanist and cyborg theories that consider humans’ relationship to anthropomorphic machines (Campbell, 2006; Haraway, 1988; Hayles, 2008; Warwick, 2003; Wolmark, 2000).

Methods and data sources
Data were drawn from a multi-year, ethnographic study of engineering education at a Flagship University in the Western United States. One interest for this study is in how incoming freshman learn to enact engineering practice, including how they come to embrace or reject technical rationality. We focus on two design experiences: A design course during students’ first semester and a summer design workshop for incoming freshmen.

Analysis identified projects in which students: a) used their bodies to test the effectiveness of their designs, or b) created a design that imitated human movement. Three such projects were identified: Two teams in Fall 2014 who designed a “lift chair” for firefighters responding to medical assist calls, and six teams in summer 2015 who designed disaster relief robots.

We addressed the following questions:
• How do students draw on embodied past experiences to design, test, and refine their projects?
• How do students’ identification and anthropomorphization of robots impact their design, testing, and refinement of their projects?
• How does embodiment reflect or challenge technical rationality in engineering pedagogy?

Results: While students often displayed a natural interest in and tendency toward embodied interactions with their projects, this form of engagement and practical knowledge was downplayed both by instructors and by students. Although this was true across the analyzed data, it was particularly pronounced among first-semester freshmen, who tended to rely on knowledge they were gaining in their math and physics courses and to downplay “soft” knowledge of embodied experience.

Significance: This paper identifies an important area of knowledge and experience that can support engineering undergraduates in identifying more strongly with design projects and, by extension, with the field of engineering. This is particularly significant for recruiting and retaining students who struggle with academic content of their core engineering courses, or for supporting students who are more drawn to an engineering of the body.

Authors

• Jacob McWilliams, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Kevin O'Connor, University of Colorado - Boulder