Michael Lachney & David Banks, RPI
Authors: Michael Lachney & David Banks, RPI
Engineering education research continues to reveal the importance of cultural responsiveness when preparing students for real-world problem solving. Undergraduate engineering curriculums however, continue to present problem solving skills and design methods as universally viable across cultural contexts. The result is that many well-intentioned engineering students, once they are asked to complete capstone projects, overlook cultural elements or have difficulty effectively utilizing their engineering skill sets in community contexts.
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This paper offers an interventionist approach to culturally responsive engineering education based on the idea that teaching assistants (TAs) can be learning brokers who help students and faculty create real-world problem identification and solving scenarios that foster community-classroom connections. Based on our experiences as TAs for the Product Design and Innovation (PDI) program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, we highlight the successes and challenges of our own roles as TA learning brokers. PDI studio classes are meant to infuse traditional design and engineering pedagogy with the kinds of critical engagements that are the foundation of science and technology studies. Including guest speakers and ethnographic research projects in our courses, we helped students explore the wide range of standpoints with regard to design, technology, and organizational logic. In so doing we ran into our own set of institutional and cultural barriers that encourage more traditional engineering curriculums that, while frustrating, elicit productive tensions that are worth theorizing.
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First, we compare the role of TAs as learning brokers to traditional conceptions of TAs in higher education. Second, we contextualize our own interventions by comparing our studio classes that cover different subjects and offer examples of culturally responsive engineering design projects appropriate for a variety of design and engineering programs. Finally, we outline the institutional barriers found in traditional engineering education that, if TAs are going to take on roles as learning brokers, must be overcome.