”Drugs, Alcohol, Joblessness, and Lifestyle”: Engineering Students' Perceptions of Homelessness and Implications for Social Justice Education

Abstract

This paper describes how engineering students in a lower division user-centered design course framed issues of homelessness within an engineering context. We focused on the issue of homelessness as the context for the course's design project because it is one of the largest social justice issues impacting the area where the University of the Borderland (pseudonym) is located. The goal was to determine how the project influenced students' perceptions of homelessness and the role of engineers in this social justice issue. Results indicated that students tend to frame issues of homelessness in simplistic terms aligned with deficit perspectives (e.g., inadequacies of the home) and meritocratic ideologies. These results suggest that engineering educators that seek to address issues of social justice need to first deconstruct the complexity of social issues and the nuances involved in technical work. Decoding complex social issues is important in order for students to see themselves as agentic actors that can contribute to social justice through engineering design.