Abstract Background Engineering education has transformative potential, yet underrepresented youth, particularly students of color, remain disconnected from opportunities to see themselves as future engineers. Integrating social justice into engineering education offers a pathway to engage these students by linking technical skills to real‐world, community‐based problems. Purpose/hypothesis We examined how participants in a justice‐oriented engineering camp for middle school youth of color made sense of their engagement with the camp's justice‐oriented curriculum. Specifically, we explored how mentees, undergraduate mentors, and teacher mentors narrated their experiences and how their stories interconnect to illuminate the relational terrain on which justice‐oriented engineering education unfolds. Design/method We used the story constellations approach, drawing on focus groups and individual interviews to analyze the interconnected experiences of each group across 3 years of camp programming. We used open and a priori coding methods before analyzing data through the process of broadening, burrowing, and restorying. Results We highlight three key themes: (1) engineering for social justice , where participants connected engineering projects to community issues such as safety, hunger, and environmental justice; (2) educational impact and growth , which revealed the development of technical skills, leadership, and social awareness; and (3) community , where collaboration was noted as central to learning and problem‐solving. Conclusions Justice‐oriented engineering education has the potential to transform students' technical knowledge and social responsibility, particularly for underrepresented youth in STEM. Our findings suggest that combining engineering content with community‐based social justice goals deepens engagement, enhances learning outcomes, and fosters a sense of responsibility among future engineers.
Abstract Background Active learning and student engagement are recognized as essential in engineering education and mathematics learning. Research is needed to reveal how different practices and events in university mathematics classrooms promote students' cognitive engagement to identify good practices for enhancing engagement. Purpose This study aimed to identify transitions in student cognitive engagement and how different classroom events precede transitions into higher cognitive engagement modes in large and small group learning settings in university mathematics classrooms. Design Students' cognitive engagement was coded according to the interactive‐constructive‐active‐passive (ICAP) theory to understand students' overall engagement in real time, and transitions from lower to higher cognitive engagement modes were qualitatively analyzed. The video data were collected in an introductory mathematics course part of an engineering program. Participants were first‐year software engineering students. Results In the large group setting, transitions into active and constructive modes were the most represented. In particular, the teacher's prompts preceded students' transitions into higher engagement modes. In the small group setting, transitions into active and interactive modes were the most represented, and the role of classmates' prompts was highlighted in transitions into higher modes. Interactive engagement was prompted mostly by classmates' prompts or students' own initiatives. Conclusions Different learning settings have special characteristics when it comes to enhancing students' cognitive engagement. Findings indicate that teachers' constructive prompts and classroom organization contribute significantly to transitions in student engagement in the large group setting. In the small group setting, classmates' prompts were emphasized in promoting transitions, especially into the interactive level.
Abstract Background Care ethics has gained visibility in engineering education, but the literature remains conceptually diffuse and methodologically uneven. As a result, it is unclear what researchers mean by “care,” how they translate it into educational practice, and what kinds of claims the existing evidence can currently support. Purpose This preregistered synthesis critically examines how care ethics is conceptualized, implemented, and evidenced in engineering education. Scope/Method Database searches and citation tracing identified 53 sources published between 1997 and 2025 that explicitly engaged care ethics in engineering education contexts. Extracted data covered conceptual framings, educational settings and formats, study designs, data sources, outcomes, implementation issues, and implications for engineering education. Results The corpus comprised 23 nonempirical and 30 empirical, predominantly qualitative, sources. We identified four conceptual strands: (i) care as a way of teaching and conditions for ethical agency, (ii) care ethics as a normative theory for guiding sociotechnical judgment, (iii) care ethics as accountable community engagement, and (iv) care ethics as politics of care work and institutional responsibility. Tronto's care phases predominate across strands, shaping how care is translated into engineering education practice. Across strands, the most consistent pattern was a format–evidence mismatch: common course formats and proxies make attentiveness and responsibility comparatively visible, while competent care, responsiveness, and solidarity are rarely designed for, observed, or measured. Conclusion The central finding is that the field is comparatively strong in specifying what care should mean in engineering education but less consistent in generating evidence of how it unfolds in practice.
Abstract Background The concept of interdisciplinarity has gained considerable traction in engineering education. However, research has primarily focused on its impact on students' learning experiences and outcomes, while relatively little is known about how engineering teachers conceptualize interdisciplinary education. Additionally, there have been calls for theoretical insights into interdisciplinary education. Purpose Drawing on Weber's concept of the “ideal type,” which aims to capture salient theoretical features of social phenomena, this paper seeks to contribute to a theoretical understanding of how engineering teachers conceptualize the nature of interdisciplinary education. Design/Method Eighteen engineering teachers from three universities across three Nordic countries, all experienced in teaching interdisciplinary courses, participated in semi‐structured interviews. The analysis proceeded in two stages. First, an empirical analysis, where the interview transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis. Second, a theoretical analysis developed an ideal‐type conceptualization of interdisciplinary education and examined it through a socio‐cultural lens. Results The analysis led to the development of a typology comprising of four ideal‐type conceptualizations of interdisciplinary education. The typology, taking the form of a two‐by‐two matrix, advances theoretical understanding by discerning two modes of disciplinary interaction (epistemic and social) and two roles of integration (integrationist and generalist) in interdisciplinary education. Conclusions The typology weaves together our empirical findings with key theoretical strands and positions on interdisciplinarity identified in the scholarly literature into a cohesive framework that informs both the theory and practice of interdisciplinary education. The typology can be used as a “boundary object,” a conceptual tool that facilitates collaboration between teachers across disciplinary boundaries.
