Citizenship Education in Engineering Degree Programs: An Analysis of the Academic Literature

Citizenship education in engineering programs has become a topic of growing concern due to the social, environmental, and technological impacts of engineers’ professional practice. However, there is a lack of systematized information about trends and gaps in the academic literature in this area, which hinders the work of researchers, educators, and academic administrators. Therefore, this study examined the academic literature of the last thirty years (1996–2025) in four major scientific databases (WoS Core Collection, Scopus, SciELO, and Dialnet Plus). A systematic review was conducted using the PRISMA method, which allowed the selection of the articles (n = 74). These articles were then examined through qualitative thematic analysis. Additionally, descriptive frequencies of the corpus were identified, allowing for more precise contextualization. The results show a growing, albeit concentrated, field amidst an incipient transition from a dominant individualistic approach to a critical-democratic one. Furthermore, several significant gaps in the literature were identified, pointing to new research directions. Finally, the implications of these results for engineering schools are presented.