837.4
”Soft” Knowledge As a Threat To Engineering Legitimacy?
The pertinent role of technology in societal development expands the demands on future engineers to “soft” skills such as intercultural communication and consideration for economic, social and environmental aspects. Therefore, the engineering profession is in a process of re-examining and re-legitimising their knowledge-base.
In spite of a general agreement on the need for future engineers to be broad thinking and hybrid, the engineering education system has been reluctant to part with traditional knowledge regimes focusing primarily on “hard core” scientific and technical competencies.
An empirical investigation of a year group of engineering students in Denmark finds that a great deal of the professional status and legitimacy of the engineer is based on the symbolic value attributed to the engineering knowledge base. The experience of hardship and endurance in relation to the demanding workload of the science and technology disciplines and a high degree of difficulty of these subjects are seen as ”tests of manhood”, ritualising the professional initiation.
This anachronistic way of legitimising the profession may bolster the self-confidence of the engineering students making it through to graduation, but it is also likely to be an obstacle to the stated objectives of engineering education systems of attracting more women to the engineering profession and of providing engineering professionals able to address challenges of a dynamic, global society.
References
Evetts 2011: Sociological Analysis of Professionalism, Comparative Sociology.
Gibbons et al 1994: The new production of knowledge, Sage
Godfrey & Parker 2010: Mapping the Cultural Landscape in Engineering Education, Journal of Engineering Education.
Lee 2005: Tackling technology's image problem among young girls, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy.
Jamison 2013: The Making of Green Engineers, Morgan & Claypool.
Williams 2003: Education for the Profession Formerly Known as Engineering, Chronicle of Higher Education.