Are Civil Engineers "Practicing What They Preach?"

Kakoun, Nathalie Al; Boy, Frédéric; Xavier, Patricia

doi:10.18260/1-2--36697

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The gap for a mechanism to promote empathy without causing a 'backlash' therefore is highlighted. This project introduces the concept of exploiting the psychological phenomena of priming as a tool to 'Prime Civil Engineers into Human-Centred Designing' (-see paper (Al Kakoun, Boy, Groves, & Xavier, 2021) on this),…”

Section: Contributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priming and Mining the Civil Engineering Mindset: How Personal Values and Perfectionism Shape Societal Engagement and Consideration in Design

Al Kakoun

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There are many ongoing calls for the integration of public welfare needs and concerns into engineering curricula and practice; for example, promoting social consciousness, human-centred design, and other socially-related frameworks. However, some engineering students still seem to devalue or resist these initiatives. This project attempts to overcome this problem by exploring a new methodology to facilitate such integrations, whilst bypassing the possible resistance. In the first intervention, this project explores to facilitate such notions via exploiting the psychology-informed approach of priming. Results of the first intervention showed that the priming initially intended to raise empathy (and by extension, social consciousness) scores unexpectedly resulted in significantly decreasing them. This initiated the second and third interventions, which explored how different key facets of the mindset (i.e., personal values and perfectionism, respectively) contribute to decisionmaking, particularly in contexts of human-centred designing and socially relevant initiatives, in civil engineering design. Such research on exploring the engineering mindset was to also inform the underexplored research literature on the subjective nature of sustainable decision-making in engineering. .. The second and third interventions therefore serve to fill the gap on addressing the subjective nature of sustainable decision-making in engineering, by researching to understand how the different facets of the mindset (i.e., personal values and perfectionism, respectively) dictate decision-making and facilitate (or hinder) social engagement and consideration in human-centric designing and socially considerate contexts. The influence of priming on such decision-making processes and social considerations were also observed in light of the different facets of the mindset. Results show that the majority of civil engineering undergraduates hold dominant Higher Order Values rooted in Self Transcendence (60.87%), and were categorised as perfectionists (74.48%). Findings indicate that those with Higher Order Value rooted in Self Transcendence were significantly less likely to produce what I term Communal Designs (i.e., designs that inform the metaphysical as well as the physical needs of the end-user), compared to those with dominant values rooted in the Higher Order Value of Openness to Change. Students were also found to transition in value towards the Higher Order Value of Conservation with time (i.e., with transition from year 1 to year 3 in a civil engineering programme), and thus transition away from their likelihood of producing Communal Designs by extension. Similarly, those categorised as perfectionists were significantly less likely to produce Communal Designs compared to those categorised as non-perfectionists. Perfectionists were later found to be associated with the Higher Order Value of Conservation when resumed back to the literature for sense-making of the present findings. Underlying common motives of Self-Protection and Anxiety-Av...

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Section: Contributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priming and Mining the Civil Engineering Mindset: How Personal Values and Perfectionism Shape Societal Engagement and Consideration in Design

Al Kakoun

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“…Despite this, core engineering curricula tend to provide students with all the necessary parameters to generate a single, technical solution [4]- [6], rather than having students engage in the complexities associated with working with "messy real world problems" [4]. To address this, engineering educators have worked to integrate social considerations into project design through collaboration with stakeholders as well as research into the sociotechnical nature of engineering [6]- [10]. Of particular interest to educators are strategies for incorporating community engagement as early as the problem definition stage of an engineering design project.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instructors have used semester-long projects to educate engineering students about social considerations and community engagement throughout the engineering design process. These hypothetical projects are usually set in developing countries, and they incorporate social considerations into a traditional engineering course by making students consider the design challenges and the social considerations for the chosen site [10], [30], [31]. However, these cases often involve students either generating their own problem definition [10] or using a clearly defined problem for the basis of their project [31].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These hypothetical projects are usually set in developing countries, and they incorporate social considerations into a traditional engineering course by making students consider the design challenges and the social considerations for the chosen site [10], [30], [31]. However, these cases often involve students either generating their own problem definition [10] or using a clearly defined problem for the basis of their project [31]. No interaction occurs between students and community members, as the entire project is based on hypothetical scenarios.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Teaching Students to Incorporate Community Perspective into Environmental Engineering Problem Definition through Iterative Conceptual Site Models

Schwartz,

Smits,

Smith

et al.

2022 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. She received her B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 2017 and her M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 2018. Michelle's previous research covered numerous topics including the effects of temperature on soil moisture probes, middle school students' perceptions on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and natural gas leak detection methods. Her current research is on how contaminant perception of artisanal and small-scale mining at different spatial scales influences environmental response and how engineers can work with that information to co-develop socio-technical responses to environmental pollution.

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Are Civil Engineers "Practicing What They Preach?"

Cited by 2 publications

References 74 publications

Priming and Mining the Civil Engineering Mindset: How Personal Values and Perfectionism Shape Societal Engagement and Consideration in Design

Priming and Mining the Civil Engineering Mindset: How Personal Values and Perfectionism Shape Societal Engagement and Consideration in Design

Teaching Students to Incorporate Community Perspective into Environmental Engineering Problem Definition through Iterative Conceptual Site Models

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