Student-centredness in Engineering Education: Where goes the teacher?

This paper argues that direct transfers of teaching methodology from Education Theory to Engineering Education is questionable if fundamental notions of epistemology are not sound at the time of the transfer. This paper discusses the question of what `student-centredness' means in general and in particular, to Engineering Education especially in terms of how classroom activities are designed and carried out. Proponents of student-centred teaching within Engineering Education have typically adopted classroom methods like Active Learning to be used in university lecture halls. Based on Vygotskii's theory of Social Constructivism and the broader understanding of sociocultural influence, this study uses empirical data from a 14-week Academic Writing course taught to first year Engineering and Technology undergraduate students in a Malaysian university to build a case for how having sound epistemological understanding can lay the foundation for effective teaching and learning. This paper will illustrate how this course which is carried out through an apparently `traditional' approach and largely, on an individual (non-pair, non-group) basis can still amount to Active Learning and is still student-centred. This paper concludes that epistemological underpinnings of this knowledge transfer from Educational Theory to Engineering Education are critical for effective teaching and learning.