Fundamental science versus design: Employers and engineering studies in British Universities, 1935?1976

Divall, Colin

doi:10.1007/bf01096407

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Industrialists in the United States, Britain and France, for example, have objected that the curriculum and research of the engineering colleges are excessively theoretical (Ferguson 1992, pp. 159-168;Divall 1991;Grelon 1994, p. 383). During the 1980s and 1990s, similarly, reports by American and British medical organizations called for less time in the medical curriculum to be devoted to specialist knowledge and laboratory sciences and more to be spent on teaching basic practical skills (Rothstein 1987, Mahadevan 2002.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 86%

On the Genesis of Technoscience: A Case Study of German Agricultural Education

Harwood

2005

Perspectives on Science

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Though many are agreed that "technoscience" is a signiªcant phenomenon, little systematic attention has yet been paid to the circumstances under which it has emerged. Technoscience is conceptualized here as the outcome of a process of convergence in which technological knowledge acquires many of the characteristics of scientiªc knowledge while the latter shifts in the opposite direction. The analytical problem is then a matter of understanding why such "drift" has occurred at particular times and places. The drift of higher technical education toward science has been observed in a variety of domains including engineering and medicine, but in this paper I identify such a trend in late nineteenth and early twentieth century agricultural education, with particular reference to Bavaria. The process is interpreted using a model of institutional dynamics loosely based upon Bourdieu's concept of the academic "ªeld."The contributors to this volume are agreed that technoscience is a signiªcant phenomenon deserving analysis. For historians one of the most interesting questions is necessarily: under what circumstances has technoscience emerged? Few answers have as yet been proposed to this question, and they have necessarily been brief and quite general. In this paper I will offer a more systematic explanation based on a book-length study of the evolution of German higher agricultural education from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War (Harwood 2005).The central problem in the book is to account for the fact that the curriculum and research conducted at some agricultural colleges was more tightly tied to "practice" while at others the approach to problem-solving was more heavily science-based. Moreover, over time there was a tendencyOf several contributors to this volume who offered helpful comments on a draft of this paper, I would especially like to thank Ursula Klein and John Dettloff. Thanks, too, go to Skali Sigurdssou for extensive feedback.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 86%

On the Genesis of Technoscience: A Case Study of German Agricultural Education

Harwood

2005

Perspectives on Science

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“…Basing curricula on guesses for the potential market as well as experts such as Hinton meant that the complement and level of university courses varied. 32 Initially entrepreneurial forays into what the College directors hoped would be a burgeoning market, such courses replaced Ministry-mandated and Harwell-inspired offerings (Divall 1991;Yeo 1997).…”

Section: Triggered Release: the Declassification Of Nuclear Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Implanting a Discipline: The Academic Trajectory of Nuclear Engineering in the USA and UK

Johnston

2009

Minerva

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The nuclear engineer emerged as a new form of recognised technical professional between 1940 and the early 1960s as nuclear fission, the chain reaction and their applications were explored. The institutionalization of nuclear engineering-channelled into new national laboratories and corporate design offices during the decade after the war, and hurried into academic venues thereafter-proved unusually dependent on government definition and support. This paper contrasts the distinct histories of the new discipline in the USA and UK (and, more briefly, Canada). In the segregated and influential environments of institutional laboratories and factories, historical actors such as physicist Walter Zinn in the USA and industrial chemist Christopher Hinton in the UK proved influential in shaping the roles and perceptions of nuclear specialists. More broadly, I argue that the Statemanaged implantation of the new subject within further and higher education curricula was shaped strongly by distinct political and economic contexts in which secrecy, postwar prestige and differing industrial cultures were decisive factors.

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“…Furthermore, the connections between formal academic knowledge, high-level training and effective problem solving in other areas of expert practice, such as engineering and medicine, are clearly more complex and contingent than the simple pure science ~ applied science ~ practical problem-solving model implied (e.g. Atkinson 1981;Divall 1991;Vincenti 1984;Whitley 1988). The variety of ways in which managers are developed in the leading market economies, together with the significant differences found between fields of professional expertise in how formal academic knowledge is integrated into training programmes and problem-solving practices, suggest that the formalization of managerial skills around research-based knowledge is contingent upon both the nature of managerial jobs and problems and the institutional context in which firms and markets operate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Academic Knowledge and Work Jurisdiction in Management

Whitley

1995

Organization Studies

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Relations between formal, academic knowledge, training in high-level expertise and practical problem-solving activities vary considerably across fields of practice, as well as across societies. Four major kinds of skills development, certification and extent of jurisdictional control over tasks and jobs can be distinguished: craft professional, academic professional, contested academic and research based. Most academically credentialed managerial skills are similar to contested academic skills. These variations in types of skill formation and jurisdiction result from differences in dominant institutions and characteristics of fields of practice. Of particular importance are: the extent of professional élite power, state licensing, the prestige of modern science and of universities, the level of student demand, the nature of the employment system and labour-market organization and the contextual dependence of problems and issues. Academics in some managerial fields have extended their jurisdictional control in some countries by developing technical skills for dealing with complex, yet well-bounded and general, kinds of problems involving quantitative information.

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Fundamental science versus design: Employers and engineering studies in British Universities, 1935?1976

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

On the Genesis of Technoscience: A Case Study of German Agricultural Education

On the Genesis of Technoscience: A Case Study of German Agricultural Education

Implanting a Discipline: The Academic Trajectory of Nuclear Engineering in the USA and UK

Academic Knowledge and Work Jurisdiction in Management

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