Social, Technical... and Environmental?: Addressing Environmental Entanglements as a Part of Engineering Education

Work in Progress Social, Technical... Environmental?: Addressing Environmental Entanglements as a Part of Engineering Education Training students to be sensitive to the entanglements of technologies and social life has been an important move for engineering educators interested in advancing generative critiques of engineering, connecting to student values, and framing new perspectives about what engineering can be. However, scholarship in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Environmental Humanities makes the case that engineering is more than sociotechnical. Environmental conditions, forces, and agents are critical to consider in relation to technologies, too. In this paper, we suggest that introducing students to engineering as a social, technical, and environmental activity has productive implications. Here, we outline two main areas of pertinent theory. We group these areas into systems theories and material vibrancy and enchantment theories. For each of these, we 1) offer a synopsis of the insights, key texts, and implications and 2) show the utility of the approach to advance important pedagogical goals specifically related to socially responsible engineering practices in engineering education.