A Multi-Phase Exploration of Conceptualizations, Perceived Importance, and the Development of Empathy within Engineering

Throughout the United States, there have been numerous calls for the development of well-rounded engineers through a more holistic engineering education. This dissertation is a collection of three independent but related studies exploring the role of a disposition that seems intimately connected to many skills described as necessary for the next generation of engineers within these calls: empathy. Each chapter of this dissertation provides unique insights on conceptualizations, perceptions of the importance, and the development of this phenomenon within engineering and engineering education. The first study investigates how empathy and care look within an engineering context through three separate but interrelated phases including (a) a summative content analysis of existing literature, (b) thematic analysis of small group interviews with engineering faculty, and (c) thematic analysis of written responses from practicing engineers to an open-ended question about empathy and care. Taken together, findings from these three phases demonstrate that although empathy and care have a place within engineering, conversations and awareness of these phenomena are not often explicitly stated within the literature or frequently addressed by engineers or engineering faculty. The second study explores the importance and existence of empathy and care within engineering practice. This study includes (a) thematic analysis of engineers’ conceptualizations of empathy and care (n = 25), (b) phenomenological analysis of engineers’ experiences of empathy and care within the workplace (n = 25), (c) exploratory factor analysis of an empathy and care survey (n = 1574), and (d) non-parametric testing of engineers’ responses to the derived factor structure (n = 1481) to explore in what ways empathy and care are perceived as most important to engineering practice, and whether these perceptions vary by gender or years of work experience. Phenomenological analysis led to the emergence of 13 themes along four categories including (a) design outcomes, (b) personal outcomes, (c) relational outcomes, and (d) broader ideas. Non-parametric testing of the derived factor structure indicated that practicing engineers with greater years of work experience were more likely to perceive empathy and care as existing in engineering practice and as important to their work. The third study explores developments in undergraduate engineering students’ perspective-taking tendencies after participating in an engineering ethics course. This study follows a concurrent mixed methodological research approach, first analyzing students’ changes in a psychometric instrument (the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) along with evaluative changes in an ethics transfer case study, and second through thematic analysis of critical incidents derived from semi-structured interviews with course participants (n = 19). Quantitative findings indicated that students’ self-reported perspective-taking tendencies increased over the course of the semester and qualitative findings indicated there were six fundamentally distinct causes of this increase and five distinct types of outcomes related to perspective-taking. Taken together, the results from these three inter-related studies highlight contextual considerations for allowing empathy to manifest itself within engineering, potential pathways and improved outcomes of an empathically guided engineering process, and educational design strategies for prompting critical experiences to develop engineering students’ empathic tendencies