Educating Change-Makers: A Framework for Sustainable Making and Activist Engineering

Abstract

Engineers---often characterized as paragons of problem solving---are typically ill-prepared to adequately address social and environmental challenges as a result of their narrow focus on the technical dimensions of their work. In this paper we present an educational framework that integrates sustainability theories, design thinking methods, and maker education principles. We pull these three components together to motivate and empower diverse students to become "activist engineers" who develop holistic, systemic solutions to complex social and environmental problems through collaborative making that centers around the collective good.