EMPATHY AND CARING AS CONCEPTUALIZED INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF ENGINEERING: EXTENSIVE LITERATURE REVIEW AND FACULTY FOCUS GROUP ANALYSES

摘要

The purpose of this study was to investigate how faculty both inside and outside of engineering conceptualize empathy and care and how they perceive empathy, care, and engineering to be (or not to be) interrelated. The project employed a comprehensive comparative literature review alongside a thematical analysis of focus group interviews, the interviews being conducted with faculty inside and outside of engineering. The primary research objectives include (1) defining empathy and care within engineering, (2) defining empathy and care in disciplines which are traditionally perceived as caring/empathetic (e.g. counseling, nursing, etc.), and (3) comparing the role of empathy and care within engineering to disciplines outside. This study found that the terms "empathy" and "care" are infrequently applied to an engineering context, although like-terms such as "users' needs" and "compassion" are present in the literature. Focus group participants discussed several ways through which engineering is already an empathetic/caring discipline, such as in the prominence of collegial collaboration or when considering the importance of the societal issues engineers seek to solve. It was suggested that if engineers were to become more empathetic and caring diversity may increase and solving people's problems would become more prudent. Using the literature review and thematical analysis as way points, implications for the education of engineers and engineering as a profession are discussed. Overall, promoting the constructs of empathy and care in engineering education was considered a positive undertaking with numerous implications.