Arizona State University Partners with Navajo Nation Teachers to Advance Collaborative Curriculum Design in Engineering Education

Engineering education in the United States is undergoing a significant shift, moving away from one-size-fits-all approaches toward models that reflect the diverse communities where students live and learn. At the forefront of this movement is a partnership between Arizona State University and K-12 teachers across the Navajo Nation, demonstrating how collaborative curriculum design can create more meaningful and culturally relevant learning experiences for students.

Building Engineering Pathways Through Community Partnership

The Diné Engineering Education Pathways, or DEEP, Fellowship represents a deliberate departure from traditional curriculum development models. Rather than having university researchers design lessons and deliver them to schools for implementation, this program positions teachers as active co-designers who bring essential knowledge about their students, communities, and cultural contexts to the engineering education table.

Co-hosted by the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University, the fellowship brings together educators from across the Navajo Nation to develop engineering curriculum that resonates with their students’ lived experiences. The program recognizes that effective engineering education cannot be separated from the cultural and environmental realities that shape students’ daily lives.

Schedule a free consultation to learn more about culturally responsive curriculum design approaches.

Rethinking Who Creates Engineering Curriculum

Shawn Jordan, interim director of the School of Integrated Engineering at ASU, articulates a fundamental principle underlying the fellowship’s approach: expertise in engineering design does not automatically translate to expertise in teaching within specific cultural contexts. By framing the relationship as a two-way collaboration, the program creates space for teachers to contribute insights that university researchers simply cannot provide.

This collaborative model addresses a persistent challenge in education: curriculum developed in isolation from classroom realities often fails to account for the practical constraints teachers face or the cultural frameworks students bring to learning. Teachers understand their students’ backgrounds, know what works logistically in their classrooms, and can identify which concepts will resonate based on community experiences.

Michelle Jordan, associate professor in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation and co-principal investigator on the project, emphasizes that her work focuses on collaborating with teachers rather than simply designing for them. This distinction matters because it positions educators as knowledge producers rather than passive consumers of external expertise.

Connecting Engineering to Everyday Navajo Life

The curriculum emerging from the DEEP Fellowship draws directly from challenges and experiences familiar to Navajo Nation students. Rather than abstract problem sets, lessons engage with real-world scenarios that students may have already encountered or observed in their communities.

Practical Applications of Engineering Concepts

Consider how the fellowship approaches teaching about friction. Instead of relying solely on textbook examples, one lesson asks students to design solutions for vehicles stuck in deep sand—a situation many students have witnessed or experienced firsthand. Students test different materials, compare approaches, and connect physics concepts to problems their families have actually faced.

Another activity during the fellowship itself asked teachers to design tiny “snowshoes” to help a small robot climb an icy surface. The exercise modeled winter conditions that affect some Navajo Nation communities, demonstrating how engineering challenges can emerge directly from environmental realities rather than hypothetical scenarios.

Discussions about solar energy connect to infrastructure challenges that students recognize in their own neighborhoods. Lessons about electrical circuits become opportunities to create illuminated versions of the Great Seal of the Navajo Nation, integrating cultural symbols with technical learning.

Explore our related articles for further reading on place-based education models.

Recognizing Existing Engineering Knowledge

A crucial insight driving the fellowship’s work is that engineering practices already exist within Navajo communities—they simply may not be labeled as such. Ieshya Anderson, an assistant research scientist at ASU who participated in the research group as an undergraduate, describes how she came to recognize that her family members were effectively engineers, solving problems with limited resources and devising creative solutions long before anyone used that terminology.

Gerri Moses, a third-grade teacher from Farmington, New Mexico, who participated in the fellowship, expressed this realization directly: “I didn’t know these things that are part of everyday life on the Navajo reservation are a part of engineering. It comes back to science.”

This recognition has practical implications for how teachers approach their work. When students understand that engineering is not something foreign brought in from outside, but rather a framework for describing problem-solving practices already present in their homes and communities, the barriers to engagement diminish significantly.

The Role of Culture and Language in STEM Learning

For Arlene Tsosie, an elementary school teacher in the Piñon Unified School District with more than two decades of experience, the fellowship connects to a broader mission that extends beyond engineering content alone. Tsosie’s first language is Navajo, and she attended boarding school where speaking Navajo resulted in punishment. Now, she teaches her students in Navajo, helping them see that science, culture, and language can coexist in the classroom.

In Navajo culture, teachers call their students “sha’álchíní” (my children), and students address teachers as “shimásání” (my grandma). These linguistic practices reflect a relational approach to education that contrasts sharply with the impersonal models often dominant in STEM instruction. The DEEP Fellowship creates space for these cultural elements to inform how engineering is taught, not just what is taught.

Submit your application today to join innovative education programs.

Creating Sustainable Change Beyond Individual Classrooms

While the fellowship begins with individual teachers developing curriculum for their own classrooms, the long-term vision extends much further. Supported by a U.S. National Science Foundation grant, the program aims to build capacity that outlasts any single funding cycle or cohort of participants.

Developing Teacher Leaders

Shawn Jordan envisions the fellowship eventually producing a cohort of teacher leaders who conduct professional development workshops for other educators across the Navajo Nation. This multiplication effect means the impact of the initial investment can scale through teacher-to-teacher sharing rather than depending on continued university-led programming.

Michelle Jordan notes that the fellowship provides teachers with time to learn from one another, engaging in what she describes as “rich and rewarding” discussions characterized by “respectful pauses signifying deep listening and many expressions of appreciation for one another’s perspectives.” These conversations help teachers process new ideas in ways that prepare them to share with colleagues back home.

Building Networks of Practice

The collaborative design process itself creates networks among teachers who might otherwise work in isolation. K-12 educators across the Navajo Nation often serve in geographically dispersed schools with limited opportunities for professional connection. The fellowship brings them together, allowing relationships to form that can support ongoing curriculum development and adaptation.

Teachers carry new knowledge back to their schools and communities, but they also carry relationships. As Michelle Jordan observes, “Teachers are not just individuals; they are also powerful agents in larger systems.” The fellowship leverages this systemic role by equipping teachers to influence practice beyond their own classrooms.

Have questions? Write to us about collaborative education partnerships.

Lessons for Engineering Education Nationwide

While the DEEP Fellowship focuses specifically on the Navajo Nation, the principles underlying its approach offer valuable lessons for engineering education throughout the United States. The recognition that effective curriculum must emerge from genuine partnership rather than top-down imposition applies across contexts.

Engineering disciplines have historically struggled with diversity and inclusion, in part because the field has often presented itself as culturally neutral when in fact it carries embedded assumptions about whose knowledge counts and what kinds of problems deserve attention. Programs like the DEEP Fellowship challenge these assumptions by demonstrating that engineering education can be simultaneously rigorous and culturally responsive.

The fellowship also illustrates how universities can serve as partners rather than drivers of educational change. ASU’s role in this initiative involves providing resources, research expertise, and structural support while deferring to teachers regarding what will work in their specific contexts. This orientation toward partnership rather than prescription represents a model that other institutions might adapt for their own communities.

Looking Forward: The Future of Culturally Sustaining Engineering Education

As the DEEP Fellowship continues to develop, its success will be measured not only by the curriculum produced but by the extent to which it creates lasting capacity within Navajo Nation schools. The goal is not perpetual dependence on university partnership but rather the emergence of self-sustaining networks of teacher leaders who continue refining and sharing engineering education practices.

For students in these classrooms, the impact may be profound. When engineering education connects to their communities, honors their culture, and recognizes the problem-solving knowledge already present in their families, students can begin to see themselves as engineers in ways that traditional approaches rarely achieve.

Shawn Jordan captures this vision succinctly: “Students are already doing engineering. They just don’t think of it as engineering.” Helping students make that connection—bridging the gap between what they know and how that knowledge is labeled in academic contexts—represents a fundamental shift in how engineering education can work.

The DEEP Fellowship demonstrates that this shift is not only possible but practical. By investing in collaborative curriculum design that centers teacher expertise and community knowledge, Arizona State University and Navajo Nation educators are building engineering education pathways that serve students on their own terms.

Share your experiences with culturally responsive teaching in the comments below.