Engineering Studies

Abstract

This article highlights the growing need to understand the situated commitments and practices of engineers and engineering. It asks: What is engineering for? What are engineers for? Much research challenges images of normative holism and technicalsocial dualism. The first equates engineering practices with material advancements for humanity as a whole. The second demarcates technical contents of engineering work from social practices that engineers participate in as people. Critical analyses examine images of engineers serving a profession, private industry, and the nation, state, or country, as well as producing technology through design and protecting gender, racial, heterosexual, and developmental privilege. Each delineates pathways for critical participation.We live in highly engineered worlds. Engineers play crucial roles in the normative direction of localized knowledge and social orders. This article highlights the growing need to understand the situated commitments and practices of engineers and engineering. It asks: What is engineering for? What are engineers for?Drawing from a diverse arena of research, teaching, and outreach, this article raises awareness of how engineers imagine themselves in service to humanity, and how their service ideals impact the defining and solving of problems with multiple ends and variable consequences. It does so by examining relationships among technical and nontechnical dimensions, and how these relationships change over time and from place to place. Its researchers often are critical participants in the practices of education and work that they study.Engineering studies scholars conduct historical, social, cultural, political, philosophical, rhetorical, and organizational research on engineers and engineering, paying particular attention to normative directionality in engineering epistemologies, practices, identities, and outcomes. Areas of concern include engineering formation, engineering work, engineering design, equity in engineering (gender, racial, ethnic, class, geopolitical), and engineering service to society.This article thus pursues three related missions: (1) advance critical analysis and understanding of engineers, engineering, and outcomes of engineering work; (2) help build and serve communities of researchers and learners in engineering studies; and (3) expand critical participation in engineering education, research, practice, policy, and representation as important practices of knowledge production and scalable scholarship.

Epistemic Practices of Engineering for Education

“…Paths to solutions for problem solving often use the epistemic practices of applying mathematical and scientific knowledge (Adams, 1991;Bucciarelli, 1994;Jonassen, 2014;Jonassen et al, 2006). As important as applying mathematics and science to engineering problems is, in most instances, science is not often the driver of engineering solutions-engineering is not applied science (Bucciarelli, 1994;Downey & Lucena, 1995). Rather, engineering constructs knowledge in its own right, in ways that draw from and apply other knowledge.…”

Kvinnor i dataspelsindustrin. “… kanske man inte får den uppmärksamheten som om man hade varit kille …”

“…Jag låter i detta kapitel kvinnliga och manliga dataspelsutvecklare komma till tals och diskutera hur de anser att dataspelsindustrin skall arbeta för att uppnå ökad jämställdhet. Ingenjörsarbete, som datavetenskapen härrör från, bygger på en rationalistisk och instrumentell kunskapssyn som ser vetenskaplighet som matematiskt baserad, fri från personliga intressen och preferenser samt möjlig att uttrycka i värdeneutrala termer (Downey & Lucena 1995). Det råder ett meritokratiskt ideal som säger att den mest kvalificerade individen bör utföra de mest komplicerade uppgifterna, och individens kön är av underordnat intresse.…”