Ways and Benefits of Closing the Gap: Aligning Language and Communication Teaching with the Technical Curriculum

Kjellgren, Björn

doi:10.1109/educon45650.2020.9125199

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Accreditation bodies and professional organizations across different continents have repeatedly stipulated that engineering graduates should be able to collaborate within diverse teams in international contexts, communicate with engineers and non-engineers alike, and make informed judgments that take in the impact of engineering solutions in global, ethical, societal contexts (ABET, 2019;EURANEE, 2015;FEIAP, 2010FEIAP, /2018. The path to implement these desirable learning outcomes in the engineering curriculum, however, has not been smooth (Kjellgren, 2020;Van Maele & Vassilicos, 2015). Even in places where educational interventions have been implemented to promote such outcomes, they have largely been informed by an essentialist approach rather than by a culture-as-construct perspective that prioritizes small cultures and interpretivist understanding (Handford et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Encounters with strangeness: Intercultural learning in an engineering course

Maele

Schelkens

Mertens

2021

JPHE

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This paper reports on an intervention whereby a critical approach to intercultural communication is implemented in a module for undergraduate students of engineering technology. The module centers on an encounter in which small teams engage with people and practices that represent cultural strangeness to them. A qualitative, exploratory study was carried out on how participating students perceive strangeness, on their motives for selecting their encounter, and on the insights as they reported and demonstrated them in their project reports. Students confirmed the primacy of first-hand experience in intercultural learning, and pointed at an open mind, a non-essentialist view of culture, and an awareness of stereotyping as key takeaways from the project. Providing additional teacher guidance could further support students in their acquisition of critical understanding, for instance through the development of validated (self-)assessment tools. The authors conclude that the described project can help to fill the observed lack of intercultural communication practices from a critical, non-essentialist perspective in engineering education. More generally, this study contributes to a wider pedagogy of encounter by elucidating the concept of strangeness as a linking concept for examining underlying dynamics in intercultural interaction.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%