Deconstructing Empathy for Social Responsibility in Engineering Education

This article describes a pilot study identifying the recognition and use of empathy in the engineering design process by first-year engineering students and substantive additions after analyzing the pilot study. In the increasingly fast-paced and interconnected world of technological innovation filled with complex problems, engineering students need motivation and knowledge to consider their social responsibility. We suggest empathy is a viable option to prompt action toward social responsibility. The foundations of our study design applied the philosophy of empathy, feminist accounts of virtue and care ethics, and now include epistemic injustice frameworks. Using grounded theory, we analyzed pre-and post-class surveys, a midterm reflection, and components of a final design report. The results suggested a familiarity with the concept of empathy; however, an awareness of empathy did not appear to lead to employing empathic actions in the design process. Based on these results, we propose a holistic approach to teaching empathy in engineering design that accounts for cognitive, affective, and conative empathy.