A CHEER for Engineering Education
A new research collection offers provocative discussions of theory and practice.
Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research
Eds. Aditya Johri and Barbara M. Olds
Cambridge University Press, 2014, 763 pages
The growing number and strength of engineering education departments encourage many, including at ASEE. But should EE be considered a separate discipline? This is one of several questions raised in the pages of the Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research (CHEER). While some academics feel that positioning EE as an academic department may increase its insularity, Maura Borrego and Ruth Streveler assert in Chapter 23 that drawing attention to the “field” of engineering education and EE research could help “emphasize its openness to interdisciplinary approaches and scholars,” and support greater complexity of study.
For readers hungry for meaty discussions on EER, both theoretical and practical, this volume serves an excellent purpose. CHEER is a wide-ranging work; one that, as ASEE Executive Director Norman Fortenberry notes in the Foreword, “reflects the richness and comprehensiveness of the emerging field.”
As one of the first thorough examinations of EER, CHEER fills a gap, write editors Aditya Johri and Barbara M. Olds, who foresee its use as “a textbook for graduate courses, a reference book by engineering faculty in disciplinary engineering areas, and a resource by policymakers, K-12 engineering curriculum designers, informal science educators, and others.” Authored by EE, engineering, and education specialists, the handbook’s 35 chapters are clear, focused, and relatively free of jargon; all support extensive bibliographies. The six thematic sections, or parts, are organized around timely issues of EER: Engineering Thinking and Knowing, Engineering Learning Mechanisms and Approaches, Pathways into Diversity and Inclusiveness, Engineering Education and Institutional Practices, and Research Methods and Assessments. The final part, Cross-Cutting Issues and Perspectives, tackles such topics as ethics, interdisciplinarity, information technology, and “Engineering Communication.”
Moving beyond basic introductory material, the discussions within individual chapters can be provocative and engaging. Several raise considerations about workplace implications of EER; for example, focusing on the need to produce more agile and effective engineers in coming decades. Chapter 32 proposes that ethics instruction can help prepare students for work in multinational environments: “Standards of practices often differ across locations,” authors Johri and Brent Jesiek observe, and “issues such as honesty, fairness, power, and status [become] more convoluted in co-located teams.” Like other contributors to this volume, they urge more EE research to help “build a comprehensive theoretical understanding of engineering work.”
In Chapter 6, education professor David Jonassen argues that daily work challenges faced by professional engineers differ significantly from the kinds of problem sets being taught to most engineering students. Unlike the “known solution paths and convergent answers” found in textbooks, workplace complications “tend to be ill structured and unpredictable.” Jonassen finds a corrective in classroom uses of problem-based learning, case studies, and modeling tools but cautions that engineering educators tend to be slow to embrace curricular change.
This reluctance to adopt pedagogical innovation is a recurrent theme in CHEER, yet the contributing writers are all clearly interested in what can be achieved. John Heywood of Trinity College Dublin declares in the Conclusion that engineering educators must face up to the pressing need for meaningful improvement – to curricula, to teaching methods, and to forms of assessment. He, too, underscores the importance of further research into student learning, as well as engineering practice: “There are many dimensions to human behavior and learning that have to be considered when determining the goals that dictate a curriculum.”
At 700-plus pages, the Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research is no light read, but it should prove a helpful resource for members of the engineering education community, serving as introduction for some and useful reference for others.
Robin Tatu is Prism’s senior editorial consultant.