Integrating social-scientific literacy in nuclear engineering education: Approaches developed in the GoNERI program

Abstract

This introductory chapter explains the historical background, outline, basic concept, and objective of the Program for Advanced Graduate Education system for nuclear science and engineering with Social scientific literacy (PAGES), under which the 2011 summer school was organized and this book was developed. Early efforts and trials in PAGES started in 2008 toward integrating social sciences in nuclear engineering education mainly by organizing summer schools as a test bed. Various important insights on how pedagogically effective integration could and should be achieved were obtained through the summer schools held in 2008–2010. When the Fukushima Daiichi accident occurred in March 2011, the organizing committee of the 2011 summer school, which consisted of the authors of this chapter, immediately recognized that this would be a time when PAGES faced a test with regard to its effectiveness, and the previous efforts under PAGES should be fully utilized to understand and address the accident. The organizing committee concluded that while it is still in its infancy, the PAGES approach successfully established an integrated framework for both engineers and social scientists. It changed the perspectives of the participants, both the students and the organizers, and it laid groundwork that the organizers hope that they and others will be able to build upon.