Global competence learning in engineering classrooms: exploring educators’ perspectives and practices

Abstract

Higher engineering institutions strive towards educating globally competent students, and this article examines curricular approaches to global competence education. Based on qualitative interviews, it explores engineering educators' perspectives on student preparedness, their experiences with global competence integration, and their attributions of responsibility for such learning. In its findings, the article highlights educators' doubts about engineering graduates' preparedness for global workplaces. Moreover, it retraces a variety of educators' approaches to integrating global competence learning and highlights the challenges they face in this endeavour. The article further shows how engineering educators perceived global competence education as important and acknowledged their own role in supporting it, but attributed the main responsibility for ensuring students' competence development to institutional management. The article concludes with a discussion on the potential consequences of the educators' perceptions and examines possibilities for a strategic institutional approach to global competence education.