Abstract
For a long period of time math and science subjects have undisputedly been seen as the core of engineering education that unifies the field despite the still growing diversity of engineering domains. These disciplines are assigned the role of providing an instrumental, common basis for the development and operation of technologies serving society and human needs. Though the relative part that these disciplines cover has been reduced in the wake of new technical disciplines and the resulting curricula congestion they are still serving as an ideological backbone in discussions of engineering and have made the introduction of other perspectives very difficult as demonstrated in the history of engineering education. The question raised in this chapter is whether new areas of teaching and new disciplines should be considered as alternative candidates to the core curriculum or whether the mere idea of a core should be revised and given up as part of the ‘expansive disintegration’ observed within the field of engineering. Socio-material design of not only products and services, but also of technological systems takes seriously the important role that technology has in defining social ordering mechanisms in society. This makes socio-material design a potential candidate to become the new core of engineering, coming together with other approaches that emphasize the social part of technology. If accepted on equal footing with the use of models and science, design could serve to moderate the technocratic and instrumental focus that prevails in engineering education due to the dominance of math and science in the core curriculum of engineering education from the very first lectures.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter is based on a life-long engagement with engineering education and contemporary empirical studies funded by a grant from the Danish Strategic Research Council (DSF) during 2010–13 to the Program of Research on Opportunities and Challenges in Engineering Education in Denmark (PROCEED). I would like to thank Byron Newberry who has been very supportive in improving language and arguments presented in this chapter.
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Jørgensen, U. (2015). Constructions of the Core of Engineering: Technology and Design as Modes of Social Intervention. In: Christensen, S., Didier, C., Jamison, A., Meganck, M., Mitcham, C., Newberry, B. (eds) International Perspectives on Engineering Education. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16169-3_15
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