I completely agree with Julia about loud voices “we need to change” regarding engineering education. The problem is that this "we need to change" is at least 150 years old . The question did not change in time, but the answers about “how to change” are different for every epoch. Every generation of new scholars has “new” perspectives on how to change….
Engineering as a discipline is not new for academia. But engineering education, with the epistemological emphasis on “how people learn engineering contents”- is still very young and undeveloped discipline. I think that contemporary research in engineering education has focus on identifying “right” boundarie; and it is a result of “youth” of engineering education discipline. Examples of those boundaries might include: “what are concepts in engineering”, or “how engineering education is different from other education methods” and so on. One of the today readings (Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systematic Innovations in Engineering Education, 2009) said: “Engineering education research differs from general education research in that the emphasis is on student understanding of engineering rather than on educational theory or methodology in general. It requires an in-depth understanding of engineering, learning theory, and pedagogical practice as well as access to engineering students and their learning environments” (p.9).
At the present time many engineering faculty members don’t recognize a problem in modern engineering education. Crossing Jeremi comments about different types of engineering faculty (Jeremi, Nikitha, and I mentioned that in our group discussion today): there is a frequent misunderstanding in terms about what is “engineering faculty member”? Is he/she (1) a person who teaches about particular theoretical concepts? Or he/she is (2) a person who is doing research on “how students learn engineering?”Research-orientated institutions have both cathegories of faculty members. But teaching-orientated institutions of higher education usually recognize by “engineering faculty” the first category of professors: they are people who teach “nuts-and-bolts” of particular engineering discipline.
A couple of thoughts came to my mind about the “Western white male engineer” stereotype: from my international perspective, this character-type belongs specifically to AMERICAN engineering education. In European counties, and in Russia as well, the percentage of women, who is pursuing degree in technical or engineering fields, is significantly higher.
In Russia, for example, female role in society had been significantly changed after the WW2, because of dramatic demographic situation. Russia lost more than 50 million people, the majority of them were males. The lucky guys, who had a chance to come back home alive, were injured and wounded. In this situation, traditional stay-home-with-kids female role undergo big change. Women were strongly encouraged to take traditional male positions and to obtain technical or engineering education. Similar situation was in many European countries after the WW2. The percentage of female students in Russian technical schools/universities raised up to 40-50%. It was a question of National survival to involve women in industry as soon as possible. As a result, a completly distroyed economy/industry was shortly restored by women and teenagers hands (who after the war were forced to work at factories for 12-13 hours, 6 days in the week).
The USA, on the other hand, did not have those dramatic loss of male population; most of the guys came back home after the war. The majority of women, who were involved in industrial activities during the war, also had a chance to come back to traditional home activities after the war. As a result, integration of American women in engineering and technical fields is slower compare to other countries.
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