Engineering Education Research as Engineering Research

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Abstract

Engineering Education Research (EER) has recently emerged as a field of research worldwide. In this context one could focus on the conceptual difficulties experienced by engineers learning about educational research. However, in this chapter I explore the contributions that engineering and engineers can make to education research, based on the view, drawn from John Dewey’s essay “Education as engineering”, that EER could be regarded as engineering research. My first point is that engineers have learned to handle both general aspects (in the case of bridge building: engineering mathematics, solid mechanics, materials science, geology etc.) and particular aspects (the local situation of particular bridges) of their profession. Hence, it is not possible in engineering to simply apply knowledge from science to practice and Dewey points out that this also applies to education. My second point is that engineers are trained to acquire proficiency in design and both understanding and improving complex systems. Similarly, in “design-based research” or “design experiments” in education, insights from design and engineering are employed to address the complexity of educational activities and the need, as known from engineering, for theory as well as tinkering. My third point is related to the role of technologies in promoting engineering students’ learning in, for example, laboratories. Diverse technologies (artifacts) are crucial in engineering for collecting and processing data from experiments and/or real environments for numerous applications, for example controlling and monitoring production processes and monitoring the environment. Thus, engineers have high proficiency in the use of technologies and materiality, strong awareness of their impact on human perception, and hence can make valuable contributions to their application in educational contexts.

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APA

Bernhard, J. (2015). Engineering Education Research as Engineering Research. In Philosophy of Engineering and Technology (Vol. 20, pp. 393–414). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16169-3_19

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