Decolonizing Engineering Education: Tensions, Contexts, and Commitments Across Four National Settings

Abstract

This essay stories how four scholars understand colonization and how its continued impact on colonized peoples and Lands relate to engineering, and engineering education and research in Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United States. Genuine movement toward decolonization in engineering education and research should include substantial partnerships, collaboration, and shared decision-making with Indigenous and non-dominant peoples, and the centering of Indigenous and non-dominant worldviews, and it must be localized. Decolonization challenges nationalism, capitalism, and landownership, and the notions of objectivity and the purposes and practices in engineering. Decolonization requires a fundamental shift in thinking about whose knowledge and belief systems are accessed, and how knowledge is acquired and shared. Engineering educators need to understand the crucial value of Indigenous and non-dominant knowledges and worldviews for engineering, the urgency for advancing social justice, and the responsibility of our profession to take up the call and work for decolonization.