Examining systems thinking through a biopsychosocial and cultural perspective in engineering education

Abstract Engineering education often prioritizes technical aspects over the systematic integration of social, cultural, and biological dimensions, guiding a consistent development of engineering solutions that may transform sociocultural contexts. To address this gap, this study examines the implementation of a systemic perspective based on the Biopsychosocial and Cultural Model within a capstone engineering course. The study explores how this perspective shapes students’ projects and instructors’ practices, offering insights into multidimensional integration in engineering education. It follows an Educational Design-Based Research approach within a constructivist lens and incorporates a Self-Study of Teaching Practice methodology to document and analyze instructors’ experiences, reflections, decisions, and strategies during the course. During implementation, instructors guided the student teams in project development and recorded observations, experiences, and insights in reflective journals. The analysis focused on collaborative reflections among two instructors to examine how biopsychosocial and cultural perspectives influenced their guidance and support of students’ projects. Our findings suggest that this approach strengthens contextual analysis and supports instructors in helping students consider non-technical factors that are often overlooked, fostering a more integrated and comprehensive design process. Furthermore, the results indicate that this perspective promotes systems thinking and socially context-awareness in engineering practices in project-based learning environments.