Re-thinking the Relationship between Engineering Design and Engineering Science within an Inclusive Framework of Professional Practice

摘要

Engineering design continues to be focal point in undergraduate engineering education. Developments over the past two decades include a body of literature of design course and curriculum models, the emergence of research and scholarship in teaching and learning engineering design, and the emergence of a discipline of engineering education. Ongoing challenges include an artificial separation of engineering science and engineering design in the undergraduate curriculum, definitions of engineering design that are at odds with engineering design in practice, and a perceived lack of visibility of engineering within larger society. In this essay, Thomas Kuhn's concept of incommensurability, aspects of constructivist epistemology, and Thomas Green's framework of professional conscience are used to structure an expanded framework for engineering design, and more broadly, for engineering education and practice itself.