Resumen de An ecofeminist grounded analysis of sustainability in engineering education: skill set, discipline, and value
Ranjani Rao, Alice L. Pawley, Stephen R. Hoffmann, Monica E. Cardella, Matthew W. Ohland
Sustainable engineering has been highlighted in many national reports as a key component of the education of engineers of thefuture. Yet faculty perceptions of sustainable engineering as ‘soft’ and outside the boundaries of engineering prevent its widespreadinclusion in the engineering undergraduate curriculum. In this paper, we demonstrate how ecofeminist theory could be used tounderstand the inferior status that sustainable engineering currently occupies in the disciplinary hierarchy. To characterize theongoing debates and tensions underlying acceptance of sustainability as part of the engineering process as well as of engineeringeducation, we have closely analyzed 42 out of 150 articles published in the area of engineering education using inductive groundedtheory, and we relate our themes and sub-themes to ecofeminist theory. The first theme considers sustainability to be a challengingskill set for the future engineer; the second emphasizes the disciplinary aspects of sustainability; and the third theme looks at thenormative aspect of sustainability as value-based engineering. We found it helpful to use ecofeminism as a framework for thinkinghow sustainability’s marginalization in engineering education could be related to its ‘soft’ ness, its chaotic and system-levelcharacter, as these aspects align it not with the core of engineering but rather with the marginalized ‘feminine.’ This framing shouldhelp us reconceptualize how we talk about sustainability in engineering education to make it a more integrated and valued conceptfor future engineering students.sustainability; sustainability education; grounded theory; literature analysis; content analysis
