Some thought about practice and research of engineering education

I have been thinking the relationship between practice and research of engineering education from time to time. In this week’s reading, I find this issue is also concerned by many engineering education researchers. It was stated in Prof Adams and Felder’s article (2008) that engineering education researchers were challenged by how to communicate their work with educators to ensure the applications of their research findings. In the report of ASEE (Jamieson & Lohmann, 2009), the authors also pointed out that only a few engineering educators would use educational research results such as learning theories to guide the educational innovations. While there are problems with the applications of educational research to the teaching practice, there are also problems with the justifications of educational research problems due to a lack of practical data (National Academy of Engineering, 2005). When I read engineering education research paper, I find some research problems are not fully justified. I think it could be hazardous to carry out research without really figuring out what the actual situation is in practice. For example, some studies claimed that because the retention rate of engineering student was low, we should look into the problem seriously to figure out the underlying reasons. However, there is representational data showing that the retention rates of engineering majors are actually very high compared to other college majors (Ohland et al., 2008). Also, some studies focused on the improvement of the persistence rate of women in engineering because they wanted that more women could become engineers. But there is also data showing that the persistence rate of women is almost the same as men once they are enrolled in engineering (Xie & Shauman, 2004). The actual cause of small percentage of women engineering student is that far less women enroll in engineering. In my opinion, the research results would be more valuable if the focus is shifted from studying persistence to investigating the enrollment of women engineering student. As novice engineering education researchers, I think we should all keep in mind the justification and evaluation of our research. It is very important that we base our research on a set of carefully gathered data from practical situations and real learning environments.

Reference:

Adams, R. S., & Felder, R. M. (2008). Reframing Professional Development: A Systems Approach to Preparing Engineering Educators to Educate Tomorrow’s Engineers. Journal of Engineering Education, 97(3), 259-261.

Jamieson, L., & Lohmann, J. (2009). Creating a culture for scholarly and systematic innovation in engineering education. Phase 1 report.

National Academy of Engineering. (2005). Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century. Washington, DC: National Academy of Engineering Press.

Ohland, M. W., Sheppard, S. D., Lichtenstein, G., Eris, O., Chachra, D., & Layton, R. A. (2008). Persistence , Engagement , and Migration in Engineering Programs. Journal of Engineering Education, 97(3), 259-278

Xie, Y., & Shauman, K. (2004). Women in science: Career processes and outcomes. Social Forces, 82(4), 1669-1671.