By:
Veronica Cassone McGowan, Ph.D., Instructor and Research Scientist, School of Educational Studies, University of Washington Bothell
Marcia Ventura, M.Ed., 5th Grade Teacher, Seattle (WA) Public Schools
Philip Bell, Ph.D., Professor, College of Education, University of Washington

Recent educational policy documents position engineering as a way to broaden participation for students in STEM fields (NRC, 2012; NGSS Lead States, 2013). However, a recent review of literature on engineering education found that fewer than 1% of reviewed articles focused on issues of equity and broadening participation (Hynes et al., 2017). For this reason, there are few frameworks to build on when designing for equitable and justice-centered engineering instruction in K-12 settings.
In our research (McGowan & Bell, 2020), we leveraged the diverse histories, epistemologies, and ways of knowing in engineering to critically engage learners with engineering in K-12 settings, as we asked the question, “How can we design learning environments to help students critically understand the intrinsic and systemic sociotechnical relationships between people, communities, and the built environment?” To answer this question, we introduced the term and outlined an instructional framework for developing learners’ critical sociotechnical literacy, which is a place-based approach for critically engaging learners in understanding the impacts of engineering, technology, and urban planning on their own communities and everyday lives in order to design justice-centered solutions for real-world problems both locally and globally. As shown in Figure 1, critical sociotechnical literacy is located at the intersection of critical design theory (Riley, 2008; Dunne and Raby, 2013) and critical pedagogies of place (Gruenewald, 2003) by asking learners to critique designed objects and spaces in order to re-imagine and re-make them for more just and equitable futures. In this work we hope to advance a critique of the ways K-12 engineering education may limit or expand the possibilities for broadening participation, address social justice, and provide opportunities for students to use engineering in their everyday lives.
Figure 1
Cultivating Critical Sociotechnical Literacy
As a situated, synthetic, and place-based endeavor, engineering knowledge and engineered artifacts exist within complex sociotechnical systems (Adams et al., 2011). For example, dams exist within landscapes that include entanglements of humans and non-human relations, and medical devices are used within regimes and systems of healthcare provision and practice. Research in support of socially situating engineering considers how engineers and planners historically have designed artifacts, spaces, and processes for public use as part of profit and client-driven design practices without taking into account the greater public good or the social impacts of their designs (Riley, 2008; Nieusma and Riley, 2010; Pawley, 2012). For this reason, research on equity and justice-centered engineering argues that engineers and engineering students need to ask, “Solving problems for whom?” as part of the engineering problem solving process (Riley, 2008).
In K-12 contexts, surfacing the sociotechnical and justice-oriented aspects of engineering invites educators and curriculum designers to use transdisciplinary approaches to instruction that move past applied-science models of engineering to include the broad historic and epistemic framings of engineering as design, craft, and social science (Figueiredo, 2008). Through this transdisciplinary lens, educators and learners engage in engineering endeavors that surface and evaluate the impacts of their designs on people and communities. Teaching learners of all ages to reflect on the human dimensions of engineering design is central to critical, equitable, and justice-centered approaches to engineering instruction.
The practical and material nature of our designed world means that design thinking practices become embodied in the people and places in which they are created (Suchman, 2000). People make useful things in specific places. The materiality of engineered artifacts also means that they serve as models that can readily perpetuate the cultural and historic values of dominant ideas in the field itself. Without engaging learners in critically examining what values and power structures are embodied in specific designed artifacts, these ideas become reified over time. For this reason, equitable approaches to engineering instruction require that students engage in multiple dimensions of engineering learning that include reading the designed world to understand the powered histories embodied in artifacts and spaces. Critical sociotechnical literacy is the practice of learning to read the designed world for these patterns in order to deconstruct and reconstruct these spaces for equity, justice, and health.
Below we outline a framework for and provide two examples of cultivating critical sociotechnical literacy in K-12 settings. This framework emerged from an extended research-practice partnership engaged in design-based research in a linguistically and culturally diverse fifth-grade classroom in the Pacific Northwest, in which we iteratively designed and tested engineering and science curricula and instructional approaches that were aimed at critically engaging learners in sociotechnical issues related to technology, engineering, and urban planning in their everyday lives. Our underlying stance in this research is that all engineering instruction is ultimately a political endeavor (Freire, 1996; Riley, 2008; Claris and Riley, 2012), and therefore engineering learning environments should invite learners to surface, critique, and engage in design in relation to the social and political implications of engineering on local, national, and global communities.
1. Choose Complex Anchoring Phenomena that Situate Engineering and Urban Planning in Social and Historical Contexts. 2. Ground Learning in Students’ Everyday Knowledges, Interests, and Experiences. 3. Include Community and Disciplinary Experts to Surface Critical Sociotechnical Connections and Histories. 4. Connect Phenomena and Learning Across Settings by Observing and Comparing Designed Objects and Spaces at School, in Students’ Communities, on Field Trips, and Virtually. 5. Engage Students in Professional and Culturally Grounded Engineering Practices for Critical Problem Scoping and Problem Solving with a Focus on Complex Systems Modeling. Examples from the Classroom Our justice-focused engineering instruction began with choosing anchoring phenomena that situated engineering within a complex, place-based sociotechnical framework. We used local and global case studies to engage learners in considering the entangled social, historical, and powered dynamics of each case. Each of our chosen phenomena connected to district-wide science curriculum and grade-level learning goals and emerged through a focus on current events that were personally-consequential to students. These dimensions provided important rationales and relevancies for engaging in engineering instruction. For fifth graders in this district, the three topical strands of science learning focused on landforms, forces and motion, and human health. Findings We found that engaging students in complex systems modeling was key to designing justice-oriented solutions. In each of these case studies, students used causal-loop models to situate engineering phenomena within complex, place-based sociotechnical systems. Students constructed and regularly revised their models to identify variables for change and agency within the complex network of actors and artifacts in these systems. These models supported students’ ongoing sensemaking of complex sociotechnical topics and grounded students’ justice-oriented action work throughout the year. Student projects for these case studies and other engineering units included designing rain gardens to filter runoff and sediment from rainwater to support salmon health, sending care packages to healthcare workers during the Ebola crisis, creating podcasts and public information flyers to communicate the importance and safety of measles vaccines for public health, and working against Indigenous erasure and advocating for Indigenous sovereignty in all land-based engineering design work. Implications The performative nature of engineered artifacts and spaces can be leveraged to teach students how to critique the designed world in ways that enable them to see how broader sociological constructs are related to quality of life, health, and personal and collective agency. Critical sociotechnical literacy surfaces the interconnectedness and complexity of living in a sociotechnical world, where design frequently privileges some individuals at the expense of others. The NGSS Science, Technology, Society, and the Environment standards (Lead States, 2013) engage students in investigating how things work and how designs are used and applied. Critical sociotechnical literacy adds to this framework by encouraging teachers and students to ask, “Who benefits from this design, and at what cost?” In order to cultivate students’ critical sociotechnical literacy in the classroom, teachers and curriculum designers should position engineering as a place-based, socially-situated endeavor, and should engage youth in critically evaluating the impacts of engineering and urban planning in their own communities and beyond with a focus on how solutions—developed through powered dynamics and historically-rooted narratives and systems—impact the people and places in which they are created. Most importantly, teachers should engage learners in imagining and speculating on how engineering can be a pathway for designing more just, thriving, and sustainable futures, especially for communities that have been most negatively impacted by the consequence of planning and design. Educator Resources: Through the NSF-funded STEM Teaching Tools initiative, we have published a range of educator resources related to the following categories and to the work in this article: This work is funded by the NSF under DRL 1238253. However, all opinions are strictly our own. We extend deep gratitude to the instructors, community members, and youth who participated in this study.