Erhardt Graeff

Locating Empowerment and Technical Intuition in how we frame U.S. Civic Education

12 May 202330 January 2024Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

Graeff, E. 2023 “Locating Empowerment and Technical Intuition in how we frame U.S. Civic Education.” In Haste, H & Bempechat, J, eds., New civics, new citizens: Critical, competent and responsible agents. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.

Link

https://brill.com/display/book/9789004538320/BP000024.xml

Introduction

This chapter argues for defining a good civic education in terms of empowerment and technical intuition. Synthesizing the debates surrounding two recent theories of civic learning, Danielle Allen’s book Education and Equality and essay “What is Education for?” and Ethan Zuckerman’s article “New Media, New Civics?”, I investigate the growing importance to contemporary democracy of developing specific abilities for digital civic engagement, having authentic civic and political experiences, and making citizen voice and influence synonymous. I find a strong thread tying digital civic engagement and civic education together with questions such as: How do we best enhance the civic efficacy and empowerment of young people, and of citizens more generally? I conclude that the goal for designers of civic education programs should be to model their efforts on what Sara Evans and Harry Boyte call “free spaces”.

Democracy as citizen-centered governance requires citizen empowerment (sometimes called “civic agency”), and empowered citizens need certain skills, knowledge, attitudes, and habits that lead to effective civic engagement. Empowering experiences and learning opportunities can promote a virtuous cycle of reinforcing citizen empowerment and strengthening democracy. Spaces like town hall meetings, protest marches, the voting booth, and the civic education classroom traditionally represent where these experiences and opportunities take place. The emergence of networked digital media have created new, pervasive civic spaces – the networked public sphere. Whereas public spaces offline have seen a decline in the U.S.,2 their online replacements, largely private spaces like Facebook, have grown to astounding size and influence with limited accountability to governments and the public. This means the definition of an empowered citizen has stretched beyond traditional capabilities and contexts to encompass a broad range of digital capabilities and experiences.

This chapter seeks to articulate this broadened definition by being in dialogue with and synthesizing recent debates in U.S. civic education and civic engagement scholarship, specifically those surrounding Danielle Allen’s book Education and Equality and Ethan Zuckerman’s article “New Media, New Civics?” In the end, I propose that designers of civic education programs aim forcivic empowerment that incorporates what Alix Dunn (2018) calls “technical intuition” and create opportunities to practice civics in online and offline contexts modeled on what Sara Evans and Harry Boyte call “free spaces”.

A Synthesizing Mind book review

24 April 2023Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

A Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory by Howard Gardner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Howard Gardner is a mentor of mine. So it was with personal interest that I picked up this memoir to learn a little bit about the scholar I worked for at Project Zero a decade ago. His voice really comes through in this book. I can hear his didactic tone but also the levity when he cracks a bit of a dad joke. I like the structure of the book around his intellectual development and the set of experiences that contribute to recognizing and using his “synthesizing mind.” I came away with a deeper appreciation for Howard and the opportunity to work alongside him and learn from him.

There are also some valuable insights in this book for scholars trying to make sense of their own work, especially ideas that take on a life of their own, such as his theory of multiple intelligences. Howard is rightfully proud of his work despite its misinterpretation and misuse. Fortunately, his curiosity is his guide and his deeply held principles delineate a path toward richer research and applications of his attention toward practical ends in education that have served many people well. I really loved how he acknowledged that projects can fail and some endeavors just simply end, but that there is value in the relationships developed and the people touched by even a short-term effort like the MI-based schools he writes about.

For me, the book was a quick read. And as I am also an academic, there was much wisdom in this meta-narrative from a leading light in the social sciences (or “social relations”). May I maintain his tenacity and curiosity in my own work and keep avoiding disciplinary silos.

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Using Civic Professionalism to Frame Ethical and Social Responsibility in Engineering

20 April 202324 July 2024Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

Graeff, Erhardt. 2023 (April 20). Using Civic Professionalism to Frame Ethical and Social Responsibility in Engineering. 2023 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, & Technology (fPET 2023), TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p17wdt2GriQ.

Presentation Recording

Slides

Using Civic Professionalism to Frame Ethical and Social Responsibility in Engineering from Erhardt Graeff

Abstract

In recent years, professional societies, scholars and educators, and corporations within the fields of engineering and computer science have been grasping for better principles and frameworks for the ethical and social responsibility that engineers, computer scientists, and technologists should embody. Many professional societies (e.g. NSPE, IEEE, ACM) have revised their codes of ethics. Scholars and educators have launched numerous research projects and educational experiments to determine the values and ethical competencies professionals should learn and apply. Corporations have publicized their ethical commitments and formed consortia to govern ethical approaches to research and development areas like artificial intelligence.

We know there are fundamental problems. In 2014, Erin Cech identified a “culture of disengagement” in engineering that weakens engineering students’ commitments to public welfare during their undergraduate years. She argued that ideologies of 1) depoliticization, 2) technical/social dualism, and 3) meritocracy were key pillars of engineering’s disengaged culture. These ideologies undermine engineers’ social responsibility by positioning technical expertise as supremely relevant and perceiving existing social, economic, and political structures as fair and just. In subsequent studies, Cech and co-authors call for engineering education and epistemologies of engineering that repoliticize the profession and its work. I believe civic professionalism answers that call.

Based on Harry Boyte’s concept of “citizen professionalism” and Albert Dzur’s concept of “democratic professionalism,” civic professionalism is both a professional identity, anchored by civic attitudes and related values, and a set of normative professional practices that rely on civic knowledge, skills, and habits, which augment specialized technical competencies. In contrast to typical outside experts, Boyte argues citizen professionals see their role as co-creators and facilitators of problem-solving. They acknowledge that they too are citizens alongside many other stakeholders and should share power over decisions. They acknowledge the limits of their knowledge and expertise in different contexts and embrace local knowledge. Their work serves the common good by solving technical problems while also building and strengthening relationships.

Similar to Boyte’s description, Dzur’s democratic professionals resist the technocratic urge to flatten complex problems into challenges well-suited to professional methods beyond the lay public’s reach, and instead create space for deliberation and collective action regarding social and political issues beyond the borders of their own professional domains. Dzur specifically offers democratic professionalism as a middle ground between a “social trustee” model of professional and its radical critique, which would seek to deprofessionalize expertise and recover all such power for the public. Dzur argues that professionals and laypeople both have a stake in professional decisions and should share oversight of professional ethics democratically.

This is where engineering and computer science should head—framing social and ethical responsibility in terms of a broader civic and democratic responsibility. Although civic professionalism does not have a monopoly on these tenets, which we can locate in other popular ethical engineering frameworks, it does provide a compelling emphasis on epistemic humility, politics, and the common good with clear pedagogical opportunities as this paper will show.

Undergraduate Engineering as Civic Professionalism

29 August 202214 July 2023Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Graeff, Erhardt, and Alison Wood. 2021. “Undergraduate Engineering as Civic Professionalism.” The Good Society 30, no. 1: 76-95. muse.jhu.edu/article/862840.

Link

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/862840

Abstract

Undergraduate engineering education is not doing enough to address engineering’s culture of disengagement—a culture that inhibits modern society’s ability to serve the public interest and mitigate the threat of technologies amplifying harm. We argue for visions of undergraduate engineering that purposefully embrace the humanities and make civic education integral in order to educate engineers as civic professionals. Two case studies from our college, one curricular and one extracurricular, illustrate how we are building toward a new vision by offering learning experiences in which students can evolve their personal and professional commitments to the common good and practice technical skills in ways responsible to democracy and society.