First-year engineering students' views of the nature of engineering: implications for engineering programmes

Exploring how Science Teachers' Views of the Nature and Pedagogy of Science are Affected by their Transition to Engineering (Fundamental)

“…Overall, the participants' description of the engineering as a creative process that is systematic yet flexible, non-sequential, iterative and allow for failure and redesign closely matches the elements of NOE outlined in the literature [15][16][17][18][19] . It is interesting to note that the teachers' views of NOE match the fields view of NOE more closely than the teachers views of NOS.…”

“…A two-part semi-structured interview series was used to first examine the classroom instructors' views of the nature of engineering and how it relates to science interviews; and second, to examine teachers' pedagogical view about science, engineering, and the relationship between the two subjects. The interview questions (see below) were based on questions from Karatas, Bodner and Unal's "views of Nature of Engineering" survey 16 . The two-part interview was conducted during the spring semester.…”

“…The theoretical basis for the first part of this study is based on the work of Lederman's 13,14 notion of the Nature of Science (NOS) and Karatas 15 and Karatas, Bodner and Unal's 16 notion of the Nature of Engineering (NOE). Through the lenses of NOS and NOE, this study aims to describe K-12 teachers views of the Nature of Engineering and determining how it compares or relates to the teachers' views of science.…”

Engineering Uncertainty: A qualitative study on the way middle school teachers incorporate, manage and leverage the uncertainty of engineering design task

“…9 Good designers, as Dym and his colleagues 5 assert, must be able to handle uncertainty while tolerating the ambiguity that shows up in the iterative process of design as inquiry. While these and many other authors all accept uncertainty as an inherent part of engineering, the exact meaning and nature of this uncertainty varies across the literature but is largely related to the fact that engineers solve ill-structured problems, that are complex, unpredictable, and dynamic.…”

“…To conceptualize the uncertainty as it relates to the nature of engineering, this study extracts various elements from the literature. These elements include: (1) the uncertainty of interpreting the problem, constraints, and goals within a complex, open-ended situation; 10 (2) the unpredictability of solving divergent problems that require the evaluation and judgment of many alternative solution paths; 6,7 (3) the uncertainty of optimizing a design that satisfies the competing demands and constraints of the client as well as safety, economical, environmental, and ethical concerns; 5,7 (4) the uncertainty of solving dynamic problems that require a person to constantly adjust, reevaluate and evolve as unanticipated problems arise; 6,9 and (5) designing solutions within imperfect models and incomplete information that requires all engineers to reason through some degree of uncertainty. [5][6][7] While these elements are described separately, they interrelate and overlap in how they factor into the uncertain nature of engineering.…”