What Is Engineering and Who Are Engineers? Student Reflections from a Sustainability-Focused Energy Course

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Interesting research work despite the finding being expected.

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript! Since you did not request revisions, we have not included a point-by-point response here.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear author(s),

First of all, thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. I congratulate the authors for addressing such an important topic that is about paradigms in engineering education for sustainability. It is very interesting to know about this experience, which can serve for other universities in the US and around the world to replicate. Please, see below some suggestions for your evaluation if they can contribute to improve your work.

 

Introduction

In lines 81-82, you stated that “Students are exposed to other ways of being, knowing, and doing 81 that deviate from the dominant masculine, Western, White, colonial discourse [32-37]”. The references you mention are very interesting and pertinent (Leydens, Lucena, Beillie, Riley...). Please consider adding a brief explanation of what is meant by "dominant masculine, Western, White, colonial discourse ". I believe that this can be important i) to clearly establish the authors' conceptualization and ii) to make it more attractive to the reader who is not so familiar with the references (paradoxically, many professors and researchers in the field of engineering – I would risk saying that most of them – do not usually read the literature on education and engineering philosophy).

Materials and methods

In line 78, you mention “PESTEL framework”, which corresponds to the explanation that appears in the sequence. However, the reference you use [26] mentions "PESTLE". Please consider clarifying this detail.

Regarding the questions included in the semi-structured interview, please consider explaining how you arrived at them. Was there any bibliographic research? Was there discussion among the researchers? Were there any methodological procedures for formulating them?

Five out of nine is a good sample, but please consider explaining why the remaining students were not interviewed. Were they contacted and not available to participate? If they were not contacted, what criteria were used to choose the five interviewees?

Please consider providing more details on methodological procedures for data analysis. For example, how many researchers conducted the interviews? Were the interviews conducted in person or through some online tool? How long were the interviews? How many analysts coded and interpreted the data? How were disagreements resolved and how was consensus on interpretations reached?

I believe that considering these suggestions could improve the paper in two ways: i) making the methodology more robust and ii) providing the academic community with conditions to replicate (or at least be inspired by) the study in their local situations. As a result, this would also increase the impact of the work and, in my view, would increase its citation potential.

Discussion

The authors rightly indicate a limitation of the study: "The findings from this study are limited to a small group of students from a single course offering. " (lines 297-298). On the other hand, they do not take advantage of the strong point of their study that can counterbalance this limitation: the relationship with the discussion of the paradigm concept – as this can be extrapolated to all those interested in training engineers for sustainability.

A path to try to help the authors follows: Recently, in a discussion with editors of the Journal of Engineering Education and the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, I found that both have the perception that publications in traditional "engineering education" journals (e.g., Journal of Engineering Education, International Journal of Engineering Education), are disconnected from those published in traditional "sustainability" journals (e.g., Sustainability). There is an emerging area called "complexity engineering" that has sought to unite these two corpuses through the discussion of the concept of "paradigm", a central concept for this paper. I believe that this helps to highlight a discussion present in the paper, but which was a little faded in the text. Including this question can contribute to making the paper's contribution more robust and attractive. There are even papers (see for instance: https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20438 and https://doi.org/10.1590/0001-3765202020181489) that link to central references for your work (Leydens, Lucena, Beillie, Riley...).

Finally, please consider the lack of a concluding section. Also, please evaluate if there are parts of the "discussion" that are actually "conclusions". Please consider including the paper's limitations and suggestions for future studies to advance knowledge in the area.

 

Thank you once more for the opportunity to read your work.

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript! We greatly appreciate your feedback. Please see below for our replies to your comments:

• Comment 1: In lines 81-82, you stated that “Students are exposed to other ways of being, knowing, and doing 81 that deviate from the dominant masculine, Western, White, colonial discourse [32-37]”. The references you mention are very interesting and pertinent (Leydens, Lucena, Beillie, Riley...). Please consider adding a brief explanation of what is meant by "dominant masculine, Western, White, colonial discourse ". I believe that this can be important i) to clearly establish the authors' conceptualization and ii) to make it more attractive to the reader who is not so familiar with the references (paradoxically, many professors and researchers in the field of engineering – I would risk saying that most of them – do not usually read the literature on education and engineering philosophy
• Response: This is an important point, and we have added text with specific examples to help clarify.

 

• Comment 2: In line 78, you mention “PESTEL framework”, which corresponds to the explanation that appears in the sequence. However, the reference you use [26] mentions "PESTLE". Please consider clarifying this detail.
• Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We have corrected the order of the acronym in the manuscript text.

 

• Comment 3: Regarding the questions included in the semi-structured interview, please consider explaining how you arrived at them. Was there any bibliographic research? Was there discussion among the researchers? Were there any methodological procedures for formulating them?
• Response: We agree that this is important to include and added text to clarify the collaborative process the authors used to design the semi-structured interview questions.

 

• Comment 4: Five out of nine is a good sample, but please consider explaining why the remaining students were not interviewed. Were they contacted and not available to participate? If they were not contacted, what criteria were used to choose the five interviewees?
• Response: Thank you for pointing out this oversight. We added text to clarify that all nine students were invited to participate, and five chose to participate.

 

• Comment 5: Please consider providing more details on methodological procedures for data analysis. For example, how many researchers conducted the interviews? Were the interviews conducted in person or through some online tool? How long were the interviews? How many analysts coded and interpreted the data? How were disagreements resolved and how was consensus on interpretations reached?

I believe that considering these suggestions could improve the paper in two ways: i) making the methodology more robust and ii) providing the academic community with conditions to replicate (or at least be inspired by) the study in their local situations. As a result, this would also increase the impact of the work and, in my view, would increase its citation potential.

• Response: These interviews were conducted in Spring 2021 and were all conducted online via Zoom by the first author separately from the other authors, as the other authors are all professors that the students will or have had in their major courses. Interviews were about 30-60 min. The remaining authors remain unaware of which responses correspond to each student to protect students’ privacy. We have added this to the methods section. Throughout the data analysis process, the first author led the coding and interpretation of data, but the entire project team discussed the findings. Any disagreements were resolved through discussions with all authors.

 

• Comment 6: The authors rightly indicate a limitation of the study: "The findings from this study are limited to a small group of students from a single course offering. " (lines 297-298). On the other hand, they do not take advantage of the strong point of their study that can counterbalance this limitation: the relationship with the discussion of the paradigm concept – as this can be extrapolated to all those interested in training engineers for sustainability.

A path to try to help the authors follows: Recently, in a discussion with editors of the Journal of Engineering Education and the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, I found that both have the perception that publications in traditional "engineering education" journals (e.g., Journal of Engineering Education, International Journal of Engineering Education), are disconnected from those published in traditional "sustainability" journals (e.g., Sustainability). There is an emerging area called "complexity engineering" that has sought to unite these two corpuses through the discussion of the concept of "paradigm", a central concept for this paper. I believe that this helps to highlight a discussion present in the paper, but which was a little faded in the text. Including this question can contribute to making the paper's contribution more robust and attractive. There are even papers (see for instance: https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20438 and https://doi.org/10.1590/0001-3765202020181489) that link to central references for your work (Leydens, Lucena, Beillie, Riley...).

• Response: Thank you for these references. We value the insight the reviewer provided and have highlighted the more promising preliminary findings in addition to the limitations of our study.

 

• Comment 7: Finally, please consider the lack of a concluding section. Also, please evaluate if there are parts of the "discussion" that are actually "conclusions". Please consider including the paper's limitations and suggestions for future studies to advance knowledge in the area.
• Response: After reflecting on this comment, we found that the final paragraph of the discussion section was more appropriate for a conclusion section and have revised the manuscript accordingly. Additionally, we included the paper’s limitations and suggestions for future studies.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to review the new version of your work.

I believe that this revised version has improvements in the weaknesses of the first version. The added parts have helped to fill in important gaps. Thus, in case of publication, I believe that this will increase the impact and the chances of citation of the work.

Author Response

This version addressed the editorial request to add a short paragraph
to the conclusion underlining implications for engineering educators.