A New Paradigm for a New Field: Communicating Representations of Engineering Education Research

Journal of Engineering Education, Apr 2008 by Borrego, Maura, Streveler, Ruth A, Miller, Ronald L, Smith, Karl A

ABSTRACT

Based on a three-year experience of developing, facilitating, and assessing NSF-funded workshops on Rigorous Research in Engineering Education (RREE), the authors present four representations of engineering education scholarly work in the United States, specifically teaching and research. Many of the representations describe the relationships between engineering research, education research, teaching, and assessment. For each of the representations, assessment data are presented to evaluate which aspects resonated with workshop participants and which needed to be changed for wide acceptance by a U.S. engineering education audience. It was found that participants preferred continua to dichotomy and were more receptive to models that were introduced inductively through active learning exercises. Lessons learned, implications for the field, and future plans for further development of the paradigm are also included.

Keywords: education reform, engineering education research, new paradigm

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Motivation and Theoretical Grounding

These are exciting times to be involved in the engineering education community. While educational practice may not be changing as rapidly as we might like, engineering faculty and engineering education researchers are engaged in heated discussions regarding the purposes, methods, and important questions for engineering education research. While the content and participants of the debate vary across countries and regions, we present one version based on conditions in the United States.

An earlier publication by Borrego (2007a) contends that one can describe this early phase in the development of U.S. engineering education research as being pre-paradigmatic. In the terms used by Thomas Kuhn in his seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970), a paradigm is defined by consensus about such vital issues as standards of rigor in research, including important questions, accepted methods, and forms of convincing evidence (Cuba, 1970). Similarly, Burrell and Morgan (1979) define a paradigm as a "commonality of perspective which binds the work of a group of theorists together". Current and recent debate (Gabriele, 2005) suggests that the guiding philosophies or paradigms that will later guide engineering education research appear to be still in formation.

Paradigms change slowly. Kuhn explains, "rather than a single group conversion.. .what occurs is an increasing shift in the distribution of professional allegiances" as subscribers of the new paradigm "improve it, explore its possibilities, and show what it would be like to belong to the community guided by it" (1962). Masterman extended Kuhn's theory of scientific paradigms, explaining that social sciences are characterized by multiple paradigms competing for dominance (1970). Whether engineering education is developing its first paradigm, changing paradigms, or experiencing the struggle of competing paradigms, discussions to develop shared agreement about core issues are critical to the field's advancement.

In this paper, we argue that recent engineering education debate in the United States can be traced to transitioning from an historical paradigm, which we call the reform paradigm, to a research paradigm. While the reform paradigm stressed auricular change and improved pedagogy, the research paradigm emphasizes systematic investigations, rigorous methods, and convincing evidence. As is necessary in any Kuhnian paradigm shift, the initial research paradigm rhetoric highlighted the perceived shortcomings of the reform paradigm, perhaps most notably in Gary Gabriele's July 2005 Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) guest editorial (Gabriele, 2005):

To encourage and support such efforts, the Engineering Education and Centers Division at the National Science Foundation has moved its engineering education programs from a focus on reform to an emphasis on research. Many years of reform efforts have not produced the breakthroughs we will need to find room for the new technologies and skills that are now being called for. We want to understand how students learn engineering. It is our hope that by supporting fundamental research, we can better understand how to create a more innovative, efficient, and enticing engineering curriculum that can attract a more talented, innovative, and diverse student body. We seek disruptive breakthroughs in moving engineering education out of its current mold and into new modes of thinking about engineering education. In a departure from past efforts, we are looking to transform, not reform engineering education.

Gabriele wrote this while at the U.S. NSF, which highlights another aspect of paradigm shifts-new paradigms are often developed and advocated by those who are new to a field, therefore not as invested in the current paradigm, and thus better able to see the field in a slighdy different light (Kuhn, 1970). While Gabriele had substantial experience in engineering education to earn this position, he was not as directly involved in reform activities of the past. Similarly, Kuhn proposed that paradigms change when the old paradigm no longer explains phenomena, which in turn causes a "crisis" to occur (1970). The "crisis" in U.S. engineering education might have been the perceived lack of progress in changing engineering education practices as a "failure" of the well-funded reform paradigm (Borrego, 2007a; Gabriele, 2005).