The purpose of this Small grant for Exploratory Research is to support longitudinal ethnographic research assessing the extent to which the problems of leadership, diversity, and globalization in engineering education can be understood and addressed as problems of knowledge and curriculum. The research tests the descriptive hypothesis that the dominant model of engineering knowledge and practice as technical problem solving can have the unintended effect of predisposing students not to value co-workers who define problems differently than they do.
Working effectively with people who define problems differently is a key dimension of engineering leadership in diverse work environments and a globalizing world. The project provides the additional base of knowledge necessary to assess the limitations of the model of technical problem solving and to begin scaling up an alternative model of engineering knowledge and practice as Problem Definition and Solution.
The proposed research includes (a) follow-up interviews with up to 73 former engineering students who were subjects of a 1992-1995 ethnographic study of engineering education for the purpose of tracing their trajectories since graduation and assessing their experiences and strategies in technical problem definition, and (b) organizing and analyzing approximately 4,000 pages of transcribed data from 57 individual interviews and 62 focus group interviews as well as 136 hours of audio class recordings collected in the earlier study, for the purpose of mapping systematically how learning the engineering method tends to challenge and shape students as people.
Intellectual Merit: This project is exploratory in the sense that it shifts the focus of research in engineering education onto the heart of engineering curricula, i.e., teaching and learning in the engineering sciences. It also extends the boundaries of research in engineering education by examining the relationship between the knowledge contents of engineering work and the identities of engineering students as people.
