A Community-Based Context Learning Approach To Promoting Social Justice In Teaching Engineering Communication

The research suggests a community-based context learning approach which engages students with marginalized cultural communities to investigate how technological artifacts, models or systems marginalize these cultural communities and propose for change. The goal of this approach is to increase engineering students’ awareness of that engineering work can marginalize certain groups of people. The approach integrates social change to an engineering communication course and considers student learning and transformation are as important as community problems and solutions. It brings transformative learning outcomes to students, increasing their awareness of the fact that engineering is never neutral, and their engineering profession is associated with unjust social issues. With the increased awareness of social justice, students will become agents in their future workplaces to challenge and change unjust structures.