Questioning the Politics, Ethics, and Economics of the Engineering Education Movement

• In Event: 56.073 - Slowing Down the STEM Train: Questions, Critiques, and Reflections About the STEM Education Movement

Abstract

Engineering burst into the K-12 curriculum with the release of the Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (NGSS Lead States, 2013). As states, districts, and teachers clamber aboard the STEM train, few have questioned the course of the rapidly accelerating engineering education movement or the assumptions upon which it travels.

In this paper, we use critiques of technocracy, utilitarianism, and neoliberalism to analyze the portrayal of engineering in the Framework and NGSS. Technocracy is a theory of governance by the scientific and technical elite that is criticized for its claims that technology can solve political, economic, and social problems (Danforth, 2016). Utilitarianism is a theory of ethics often applied to engineering that holds that the best moral choice maximizes benefits for the most people but which fails to address issues of justice (Martin & Schinzinger, 2005). Neoliberalism is an economic and political ideology that encourages the privatization of public institutions and uses market forces to control and exploit populations (Carter, 2016).

The writers of the Framework and NGSS argue that engineering represents the application of science to solve real world problems, such as climate change, disease, and securing supplies of fresh air and water. Disciplinary core ideas and performance expectations portray the engineering design process as a series of steps that can be used to find solutions to these types of problems. Unfortunately, this framing fails to acknowledge the role that engineering plays in creating problems in the first place. Climate change, for example, is a by-product of one of the world’s most ubiquitous engineering innovations: the internal combustion engine. Addressing climate change will require extraordinary political commitment and international cooperation that cannot be engineered through a technocratic design process.

The Framework and NGSS also emphasize the need to optimize designs for the end-user and portrays all innovations as good. This focus privileges the producer-client relationship and ignores the impacts of designs on people and environments not directly involved in this market-based interaction. For example, the design of a hydroelectric dam may solve a water storage problem, but the consequent flooding of natural habitats and displacement of people behind the dam can have enormous environmental and social justice implications that utilitarian cost-benefit analyses fail to recognize. Moreover, the focus on monetary costs and clients betrays the neoliberal foundations of the engineering education movement. Publicly-funded schools become the training ground for industry, shouldering the burden of preparing the work force that will produce profits for private corporations, profits that given ubiquitous corporate tax breaks, will not return to schools, teachers, or students, thus bankrupting the institution of public education.

Including engineering in the K-12 curriculum must include not only the practices and disciplinary core ideas related to the application of science to addressing real problems, but also an appreciation for the limits of technology, an understanding of the ethical dilemmas involved in the production of knowledge and solutions, and a recognition of the underlying market drive in science and engineering today.

Authors

• Kristin L. Gunckel, The University of Arizona

• Sara E. Tolbert, Te Whare Wangana o Waitaha University of Canterbury