and her Ph.D. in Food Process Engineering from the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University. She is a member of Purdue's Teaching Academy. Since 1999, she has been a faculty member within the First-Year Engineering Program, teaching and guiding the design of one of the required first-year engineering courses that engages students in open-ended problem solving and design. Her research focuses on the development, implementation, and assessment of modeling and design activities with authentic engineering contexts.
This synthesis paper examines the concepts of critical thinking, reflective practice, and adaptive expertise as represented throughout academic literature. The academic community generally considers each of these skillsets to be desirable attributes of engineering graduates and practitioners. Despite the trend of engineering programs across the country to embrace critical thinking, reflective practices, and adaptive expertise through mission and vision statements, the development of these qualities through education may be falling short. Lack of explicit exposure to and discussion of each concept may be contributing to the common inability of engineering students and educators to effectively communicate their understanding of each. In an attempt to contribute to the improvement of the situation, this paper aims to provide an individual evaluation of each topic as represented in the literature, a review of current operationalization techniques, and the current state of each topic within the field of engineering. Additional discussion builds connections by exploring relationships among the three topics, considers issues related to the topics within engineering, and offers possible areas of future exploration.
and her Ph.D. in Food Process Engineering from the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University. She is a member of Purdue's Teaching Academy. Since 1999, she has been a faculty member within the First-Year Engineering Program, teaching and guiding the design of one of the required first-year engineering courses that engages students in open-ended problem solving and design. Her research focuses on the development, implementation, and assessment of modeling and design activities with authentic engineering contexts.
School of Engineering Education. Her research is focused on improving methods of assessment in large learning environments to foster high-quality learning opportunities.
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