Engineers and the Metrics of Progress

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

To understand the relationship between engineers and national identity, the PIs examine the debates among engineers over the contents of engineering education. Such debates are simultaneously about what should count as engineering knowledge and who engineers should be as people. The PIs will spend eighteen months collecting and analyzing data on what has counted as engineers and engineering knowledge in eight different countries. The project tests the descriptive hypothesis that distinct patterns of engineering identities and valued forms of engineering knowledge emerged, in part, as responses to nationally distinct metrics of progress. An initial outcome from the project is a book-length, comparative historical ethnography of engineers and the metrics of progress. Methodologically, the project relies on ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and extensive collection of primary and secondary documents to map engineering education archaeologically from the present to the past and metrics of progress historically from the past to the present. Mapping engineering education involves outlining current debates and reform movements in engineering education and documenting the emergence of the principal structures and emphases in engineering education. Mapping metrics of progress involves exploring the emergence and evolution of the nation and national identity, modes of education at all levels, and dominant popular images of progress. A second outcome is expanded research collaboration among Virginia Tech, Colorado School of Mines, and Taiwan's National Tsing Hua. This project calls attention to the national and transnational importance of engineers and engineering knowledge by using the concept of professional identity to re-theorize engineering. The project will help policymakers in engineering education both inside and outside the U.S. better engage and participate in national and transnational deliberations over educational policies. Over the past two decades, virtually every country in the world that produces engineering graduates has been rethinking and restructuring the contents of engineering education, often implementing dramatic changes. This project will conduct the spadework that will put the uniqueness of the current situation in historical perspective, documenting how globalization and the dominant contemporary logic of economic competitiveness have different implications for engineers and engineering education in different countries. Accounting for national differences in engineers and engineering knowledge is a key prerequisite to understanding contemporary movements to globalize engineering education.