Specialization Latent and Manifest Functions

Our discussion about reports on the state of engineering education, and the reoccurring questions and tensions within it helped solidify an idea that had been in my mind for awhile. There are a set of concepts sometimes discussed in sociology called latent and manifest functions. Manifest functions are the intended functions or outcomes of some program or activity. So for instance, schools manifest function is to teach children and prepare them the future workforce. These are the functions we normally talk about with school, and are decided upon by an institution that has power to make these intentions clear or collectively in other cases where power is not as central. Latent functions are the outcomes that aren't explicitly intended or at least not explicitly stated. Take tracking for instance. Its manifest function is to put students along tracks or paths that match their abilities and potential, tailoring education to their needs and best preparing them for their future potential. A latent function of this, taking into consideration that student with more family resources tend to do better in school, is that tracking often segregates students of different socioeconomic backgrounds and favors those with more resources (parents with more money, who know more people in positions of power, have more status in the community, etc). That is, those with more resources end up on the better tracks--sometimes without regard to skill or potential--with more college preparation classes, for instance.

Taking this back to our discussion on Thursday, something occurred about the problem of trying to change the curriculum structure in engineering departments. Part of the problem of redesigning the curriculum, as Robin noted in a conversation during the break, is that when this topic comes up the question always is, people frame it as having to add some new class or coursework, which means something else has to be dropped. If we look at engineering it is composed of many different specialties under the broad umbrella of engineering. Students start out in first year engineering programs but then gradually move into different branches of engineering; this specialization is even more pronounced in the move toward graduate school. These students are the ones are the ones that will eventually have these same debates about engineering curriculum, and this made me wonder if there were any latent functions in engineers education experience that might complicate attempts at revising that same education later on.

Focusing on specialization, it has the manifest function of preparing students to work in different fields that are necessary through industry and government jobs. There is demand for many different types of work and people specialize in different branches to meet one of these demands. In doing so they gain a deep understanding of that field, as well as its normative culture, perhaps developing a habitus that matches the field they've become so embedded in. The latent function of this is that you get engineers who are split into many different groups, with different habitus, different expectations, norms, and so on. All of these differences may make it difficult to come to one decision on what the future of engineering education should be, so the latent function of specialization disrupts the ability for engineers to come together and create a new curriculum. Instead it becomes an in-group, out-group game of whose content gets included in the new curriculum and whose content gets canned. Not being able to see beyond this shows that to some extent, specialization leads to high identification with that specialization and muddles some engineers ability to see a broader vision of what engineering education might be.

Of course the latent function of specialization can be overcome, in multidisciplinary fields of engineering, or in societies or conferences that focus on the contributions of multiple fields. But it seems that specialization might also make movement toward a broader vision of engineering education more difficult by separate engineers into many groups who do not all see the future of engineering in the same way. Specialization cannot be discarded, but awareness of its potential to create different groups of engineers who may not always agree, or be able to come to any agreement, when it comes to critical decisions about the future of the engineering as a whole, might be something important to consider when planning for the future.

From Frames to Discussions

Reflecting on this weeks reading brought back to mind a thread from last week's reading. It seems that the epistemic frames discussed in Svarovsky and Schaffer have a connection with the discourses Dorst talks about. Epistemic frames are composed of skills, values, knowledge, identities and an epistemology of some profession (Svarovsky and Schaffer 2006).Discourse is the way people talk about some topic, but also their understanding of the words used in that discussion. Discourses are somewhat resistant to change; in these understandings values and goals are highly entwined. The skills, knowledge, identity, values and so forth contained in an epistemic frame will likely have a good deal of influence about how that person talks about and understands the terms of their discussion--their discourse--about their profession and matters relating to it.

But Dorst suggests that when it comes to design problems, the paradox an engineer has to deal with is balancing the different discourses of the people involved in the design of some project. However if epistemic frames leads to discourses, and particular frames lead to particular discourses (that is the skills, identity, knowledge and so on from epistemic frame lead to particular ways of talking about and understanding the terms of discussion about some topic), then how can epistemic frames prepare engineering students for addressing multiple discourses in their design work?

To meet the paradox Dorst suggests, engineering education could remove some of the values in the epistemic frame so the discourse is more neutral and less value laden. But in removing some of the values in the epistemic frame the discourse becomes dispassionate and harder to maintain; instead of having a distinct discourse to bring to the design project the engineering discourse is easily molded and redirected by other discourses and the end result is that their contribution to the project is diminished.

Another way to meet the paradox might be changing the epistemic frame so its more aligned with epistemic frames in other professions. However, if the epistemic frame is changed so it is closer to one or some of the other discourses typically relevant to design projects (like business/industry) then again the engineering discourse is reduced and realigned with some other discourses, losing some of the insights it might offer if it wasn't reworked in such a fashion.

Or the epistemic frame could be expanded to recognize or include some elements from other discourses to better prepare the engineering student for design problems where they will have to balance the paradoxical demands of different discourses. In this way space is made for other discourses but the insights and understandings from the engineering epistemic frame and its subsequent discourse are not diminished or weakened. This also holds up the paradox and challenge of balancing many discourses without simply removing or normalizing one of the discourses. I know of some research on this topic from an author we've read, David Jonassen. He wrote an article in JEE that dealt with exposing engineering students to multiple theoretical frameworks on ethics to test how this effected their explanation and understanding of ethical problems (Jonassen 2008). Theoretical frameworks are not the same as epistemic frames; the latter is much broader (these theoretical frameworks were further honed in on the topic of ethics in particular). Nevertheless, the general idea is similar. In his research students were exposed to multiple frameworks, and here I'm suggesting elements from multiple epistemic frames be part of an engineers education. Of course, the totality of another epistemic frame cannot be subsumed into the engineering epistemic frame without drastically transforming it; but recognition and perhaps moderate incorporation of elements of another epistemic frame would be useful for dealing with design problems an engineer may encounter later on, if we accept the way Dorst suggests design problems are responded to.

--Corey