"dark" and "light" teaching development in an engineering course, The

Journal of Engineering Education, Jul 2000 by Broekmann, I A, Cornish, L A

ABSTRACT

The changes in a second year metallurgy course over six years in a context of radical change are described. The authors embed the descriptions of change in a paradigm of reflective practice and draw from Activity Theory to provide a theoretical position for such reflection on teaching. The paper represents an attempt to improve teaching practice in a context of changing student and societal needs. We hope that by making public our reflections about the process ofdevelopment and subjecting them to criticism from colleagues, we can contribute to creative responsiveness in the challenge facing faculty in times of transition.

I. CHANGE

Kafka1 writes of a man waking up one morning to find himself a monstrous beetle. This creature in transition is in crisis, for it cannot understand the transition in either "man" terms or "beetle" terms. It has no language in which to make sense of the change. Problems of identity and self-image as well as moral, conceptual and emotional confusion are experienced by the creature in transformation.

South African society is in transition from an apartheid system divided by privilege, power, and exclusion, to one attempting to unite through the ideals of access, equity, democracy, and participation. This process is at times unpredictable and bewildering. However, radical change, and all its confusions, gives us the opportunity to re-examine values often lost in the old routines of daily practice, and provides us with the opportunity to state, confirm or reassert values that will guide our future decisions.

A The Context of Change

Apartheid education has left in its wake a legacy of disadvantage for most of the South African population. Education has been, and in places continues to be, severely disrupted. Universities committed to redress are accepting many black African students who are inadequately prepared for the university system. The effects of this lack of preparation are manifest not only in a lack of prerequisite knowledge, but also in ways in which students approach studying. Often, the top and most ambitious students from rural schools have poor written English skills and lack the basic mathematical knowledge assumed at tertiary level. The educational system has also fostered rote learning and the solution of problems through the application of routines identified through "triggers" or "cue-words." Many students are incapable of even beginning to attempt slightly novel problems. Even though support programs have been established, faculty are having to accept that their teaching mode has to change to accommodate the diversity in their classrooms. New students struggle as novices in unfamiliar academic discourses and in strange contexts. Add to this the difficulties of studying in a second language, cultural differences and educational disadvantage, and the difficulties are amplified, making their tasks as students and ours as faculty much more difficult. The ramifications of having students who are inadequately prepared, in increasing numbers, mean that faculty now have to think about how the students learn.

If we are serious about access, we are obliged to give students more than access to the university, but also access to the knowledge and access to ways of acquiring knowledge. In engineering practice where the skills and technology are rapidly changing, faculty have to help students become independent and life-long learners, able to find information, interpret, and criticize it. We have to teach students a new flexible orientation to studies, both dispositional and intellectual, and teach both the methods of inquiry in a discipline and how to study.

Moreover, faculty are having to determine the limits of responsibility. Many students expect to be "helped through" by being "taught properly," assuming it is faculty's responsibility to "fill" them with knowledge. Faculty justifiably often react negatively to such demands.

Additionally, there are calls for universities to be transformed, and a demand for accountable practice. Diminishing resources and increasing numbers of students who are inadequately prepared makes the usual contestation of priorities faced by academics about time given to teaching versus research time ever more acute. Against this background, the notion of reflective practice becomes important. However, before we look at reflective practice, we outline some principles from Activity Theory, which inform decisions in our classrooms.

II. ACTIVITY THEORY

Since the social relations of our past society are responsible for the disadvantage of so many students, it is fitting to invoke a theory that focuses on the importance of the social context in the development of cognition. We thus draw on concepts in Activity Theory. These include the importance of activity, the process of the internalization of knowledge, the importance of considering the affective dimensions of the learning process, and the relationship between intuitive knowledge and knowledge which is systematically presented in the classroom. We first sketch these briefly, then outline the implications for teaching under-prepared students.