Abstract
In this chapter we argue that the ‘common sense’ ways of thinking in the engineering community need to be transformed if we are to engage in a meaningful way – that is, to conceptually understand and to practically address – the different inequalities which exist in the world today. We suggest that different kinds of knowledge need to be embedded within engineering curricula if students are to be become critical and self-reflexive thinkers and we further argue that this knowledge, because it is by definition transformatory, form a set of ‘threshold concepts’. We discuss how an interdisciplinary team of scholars mapped a set of concepts which they felt were crucial to understand a world characterized by ecological and economic instability, and increasing disparity in wealth. Each of these has the potential of being a ‘threshold concept’, that is, of transforming conventional engineering ontology. These concepts emerged from a research group representing different disciplines – engineering, philosophy, law, history, Indigenous Studies – but here we focus on the knowledge negotiation between anthropology and engineering to illustrate how this process takes place.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Australian Learning and Teaching Council for supporting this project.
The Curriculum Team contributing to this project is a multidisciplinary team consisting of: Rita Armstrong (Anthropology and Engineering, UWA), Andrea Gaynor and Ethan Blue (History, UWA), Stephen Dobbs (Asian studies, UWA), Jill Milroy (Indigenous studies, UWA), John Currie (Engineering, University of Sydney), Michael Levine (Philosophy, UWA), Dean Nieusma (Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, US), and Jill Howieson (Law, UWA). In addition the pedagogy team include: Carolyn Oldham, (Environmental Systems Engineering, UWA), Wendy Cumming-Potvin (Education, Murdoch University) and Greg Crebbin (Engineering, Murdoch University). We also partner with Engineers without Borders, EWB (Daniel Loden, Engineer, responsible for curriculum interventions for EWB) and Dani Barrington, (past President of EWB student chapter at UWA).
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Baillie, C., Armstrong, R. (2013). Crossing Knowledge Boundaries and Thresholds: Challenging the Dominant Discourse Within Engineering Education. In: Lucena, J. (eds) Engineering Education for Social Justice. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6350-0_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6350-0_7
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