Voices from the workplace: practitioners' perspectives on the role of empathy and care within engineering

This study extends previous work on two related phenomena, empathy and care, within engineering. In two phases, we collected and thematically analyzed semi-structured interviews with 25 practicing engineers in order to understand how they conceptualized empathy and care (Phase 1) and in what ways they perceived empathy and care to exist within or be important to engineering practice (Phase 2). Qualitative outcomes of this study include 3 categories with 11 themes that highlight how these phenomena are described by engineers (Phase 1) and 4 categories with 13 themes which depict how engineers perceive these phenomena within their work (Phase 2). Using these results, we consider how empathy and care may be conceptualized within an engineering context, the outcomes of an empathetic/caring engineering process, and contextual and philosophical considerations for integrating empathy/care into engineering practice and education.