Steen Hyldgaard Christensen – författare

Using the concept of Bildung as a framework, which in late capitalism/postmodernity may be perceived to include critical knowledge, value consciousness, ethics, and social responsibility (including sustainability), this project aims to investigate the underlying aspirations, structures, and dynamics of change taking place in engineering education and practice through conversations between engineering, social sciences, and the humanities. Calling upon the spirit of philosophers on Bildung such as John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas and contemporaries, the focus of the present project is on broadening engineering education initiatives and practice that follow normative understandings of Bildung. This volume appeals to researchers and students working in philosophy, engineering, and education.

This inclusive cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering education and context. In so doing the book offers a reflection on contextual boundaries with an overall boundary crossing ambition and juxtaposes important cases of critical participation within engineering education with sophisticated scholarly reflection on both opportunities and discontents.

Whether and in what way engineering education is or ought to be contextualized or de-contextualized is an object of heated debate among engineering educators. The uniqueness of this study is that this debate is given comprehensive coverage – presenting both instrumentally inclined as well as radical positions on transforming engineering education.

In contextualizing engineering education, this book offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary, meta- and interdisciplinary perspectives on how cultural, professional, institutional and educational systems contexts shape histories, structural dynamics, ideologies and challenges as well as new pathways in engineering education. Topics addressed include examining engineering education in countries ranging from India to America, to racial and gender equity in engineering education and incorporating social awareness into the area.

Using context as “bridge” this book confronts engineering education head on. Contending engineering ideologies and corresponding views on context are juxtaposed with contending discourses of reform. The uniqueness of the book is that it brings together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and engineering from Europe – both East and West –  with the United States, China, Brazil, India and Australia.

This second companion volume on engineering studies considers engineering practice including contextual analyses of engineering identity, epistemologies and values. Key overlapping questions examine such issues as an engineering identity, engineering self-understandings enacted in the professional world, distinctive characters of engineering knowledge and how engineering science and engineering design interact in practice.

Authors bring with them perspectives from their institutional homes in Europe, North America, Australia\ and Asia. The volume includes 24 contributions by more than 30 authors from engineering, the social sciences and the humanities. Additional issues the chapters scrutinize include prominent norms of engineering, how they interact with the values of efficiency or environmental sustainability. A concluding set of articles considers the meaning of context more generally by asking if engineers create their own contexts or are they created by contexts.

Taken as a whole, this collection of original scholarly work is unique in its broad, multidisciplinary consideration of the changing character of engineering practice.