Abstract
At Universitat Politècnica de València, Meridies, an internship programme that places engineering students in countries of Latin America, is one of the few opportunities the students have to explore the implications of being a professional in society in a different cultural and social context. This programme was analyzed using the capabilities approach as a frame of reference for examining the effects of the programme on eight student participants. The eight pro-public-good capabilities proposed by Melanie Walker were investigated through semi-structured interviews. The internship is an environment in which students can put into practice the knowledge they have acquired in undergraduate studies and to find practical relevance in what they studied. Occasionally, this also entails a critical questioning of what they have learned, a greater awareness of the limits of the contents of their studies and of the way things were taught, and interest in less explored issues that are closely linked to social justice. However, tensions can arise between the pro-public-good oriented perspectives of this programme, and a more instrumental vision. One way to overcome these tensions is to foster consideration of reflexivity, that is, the dynamic relationship between technology and society. To do so, the programme must create space before and during the internship, and upon the return of the students, to discuss and collectively reflect upon their lived experience. Additionally, it ought to engage supervisors in this educational journey, both at the university and in the host institutions, and also involve socially committed organisations in this task.
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Notes
The countries involved in this programme fall into the more general category of countries of the Global South, a term widely used in the area of development studies to refer to countries characterized by middle or low human development as established by the United Nations Development Programme in the Human Development Report (2014).
The development aid sector includes many public and private actors that are channelling economic, human and technical resources to foster the development of nations and people.
FS for female student and MS for male student, followed by the identification number of the respondent. Quotations from participants provided here are English translations of excerpts of the original Spanish transcript of interviews.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all the participants in this research, which includes students and the staff in charge of the Meridies programme, especially Llanos Gomez and Alvaro Fernandez-Baldor. Also, we would like to thank the editors of this special issue and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. Finally, we would like to thank James Hunt, who made an accurate translation from Spanish into English.
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Boni, A., Sastre, J.J. & Calabuig, C. Educating Engineers for the Public Good Through International Internships: Evidence from a Case Study at Universitat Politècnica de València. Sci Eng Ethics 25, 1799–1815 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9728-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9728-z