How community context fosters sustainability in science education
Session Type
Presentation
Room
Physics and Astronomy, room 117
Start Date
16-7-2025 1:30 PM
End Date
16-7-2025 2:00 PM
Keywords
contextual engineering, student perspectives, curriculum, STEM education
Primary Threads
Teaching and Learning Science
Abstract
Within Canada, there is increasing concern that STEM students’ techno-centrism interferes with the societal need to train thoughtful problem-solvers. Take engineering as a case study: humanitarian engineering projects designed to help ‘developing’ communities experience high premature project failure rates. This raises concerns about the overall sustainability and longevity of engineering solutions. The theory of Contextual Engineering was established as a potential response to this high failure rate, and emphasizes community context as critical to the successful design, implementation, and functioning of an engineering project.
It is unclear if the current standards and methods of teaching and learning in engineering/STEM education allow for the integration and application of concepts like Contextual Engineering into students’ future decision-making in their careers. Calls for reform to introduce more experiential and transdisciplinary methods in teaching and learning suggest that there is value in evaluating the current academic environment of STEM, to conceptualize any presence of contextual/community elements, and to determine the steps necessary to further introduce it into STEM education in Canada.
Thus, our project seeks to understand the current perspectives of students about the value of contextual approaches to curriculum and program design. In this presentation, we will present some findings from a survey representing the engineering student body of a Canadian institution. This project seeks to contribute valuable insights about the current higher education climate to better inform, introduce and adapt contextualized education approaches into the engineering curriculum and STEM at-large. This project has been approved by the Guelph and Queen’s Research Ethics Boards.
Be sure to bring a device (smartphone, laptop, tablet) so you can participate and engage with the presentation in real-time!
Elements of Engagement
Participants will be polled (with Mentimeter or another similar live-surveying tool) on short, engaging questions about themselves and their place in research and education to help gauge the current practices of the participants in the room, and to reflect on how these practices may relate to contextual teaching and learning approaches that can be added to their current teaching and learning toolboxes.
How community context fosters sustainability in science education
Physics and Astronomy, room 117
Within Canada, there is increasing concern that STEM students’ techno-centrism interferes with the societal need to train thoughtful problem-solvers. Take engineering as a case study: humanitarian engineering projects designed to help ‘developing’ communities experience high premature project failure rates. This raises concerns about the overall sustainability and longevity of engineering solutions. The theory of Contextual Engineering was established as a potential response to this high failure rate, and emphasizes community context as critical to the successful design, implementation, and functioning of an engineering project.
It is unclear if the current standards and methods of teaching and learning in engineering/STEM education allow for the integration and application of concepts like Contextual Engineering into students’ future decision-making in their careers. Calls for reform to introduce more experiential and transdisciplinary methods in teaching and learning suggest that there is value in evaluating the current academic environment of STEM, to conceptualize any presence of contextual/community elements, and to determine the steps necessary to further introduce it into STEM education in Canada.
Thus, our project seeks to understand the current perspectives of students about the value of contextual approaches to curriculum and program design. In this presentation, we will present some findings from a survey representing the engineering student body of a Canadian institution. This project seeks to contribute valuable insights about the current higher education climate to better inform, introduce and adapt contextualized education approaches into the engineering curriculum and STEM at-large. This project has been approved by the Guelph and Queen’s Research Ethics Boards.
Be sure to bring a device (smartphone, laptop, tablet) so you can participate and engage with the presentation in real-time!