Implementing Social Awareness into Engineering Curricula

Abstract

The inclusion of competences related to social context in engineers’ education has been recommended by several organizations and authors. Among these abilities appears the development of reflective and behavioral skills or the awareness of public debate in engineering. In order to create an engineer profile with expanded social commitment, some criteria have been implemented by accreditation boards. In this chapter, we will review these criteria and requirements, analyze how they contribute to the future engineering profile, how universities have approached the inclusion of the new contents in their syllabi and identify the difficulties that this may present in real practice. A reflective digression on the need of going beyond the ethics, the habitus of the engineering profession, the implicit values in education and the existing gap between engineers and society is also included. Finally, the subject is illustrated with the description of engineering in Spain and the results of interviews with the presidents of professional engineering associations.