Liberating engineering education: Engineering education and pragmatism

The experts in pedagogical and curriculum development such as John Heywood and others have advocated that the liberating element of liberal studies are vocational elements of liberal education [1-2]. Since the 1960s, this statement constituted some of the leading work in curriculum development, managing mastery, and retraining programs of continued education in Europe and the US. It should be noted that some experts are viewing engineering education with a liberal art perspective [3-6] as well. This paper would like to argue a new twist in this argument. This paper will examine the following: The liberating essence of engineering education is the practical/pragmatic elements of engineering. The liberation is achieved by injecting pragmatism into engineering education. Changing our pedagogical approaches can do this liberation. We should help our students to use their knowledge gained from mathematics, sciences, and other fields to focus on making, building, examining, designing, and inventing things. Liberations for engineering come out of making change by designing, building, and inventing. This is the main missing piece of most engineering curricula. This paper reviews research and activities in pedagogical development of engineering curriculum throughout the last century and especially after World War II. The paper reviews distinct directions and curriculum trends that dominate engineering education and will raise the main question: “What makes engineering special and different from sciences and mathematics?” The paper provides the support for this argument by examining the main trends of engineer development to prove that the practical/pragmatic aspects of the engineering fields are the true essence that uniquely distinguishes the engineering education. Consequently, the pragmatic essence of engineering (which needs to be reflected in the engineering education) has been (and must be) the unique identifier and the liberating element of the engineering curricula. The idea of liberation is meant as a guiding concept to help educators reflect on pragmatic essence of engineering when balancing between mathematical rigor, scientific basics, engineering systems level thinking, and identifying a common knowledge base and methodologies.