Reconfiguring the Engineer: Comparative Analyses on German and Turkish STS Curricula

• In Event: Sustainability & Transformation in Engineering Education - II: The Narratives & Limits of Engineering Education Reform

Abstract

The proposed paper is an attempt to rethink the concept of decolonization in education through reclaiming and integrating local knowledge in educational contexts. In doing so, we plan to suggest novel approaches to teaching STS to engineering students that aims to challenge the binary system of gender and Western epistemologies of reason and universality that are inherent to global engineering education. Based on our experience of teaching STS in engineering schools in Germany and Turkey, we will present a comparative study of curricular processes and the ensuing responses.

We will argue that STS education can contribute to critical participation on the part of the students and the educators by instilling and hence guide what we call the “reconfiguring of the engineer”. In order to demonstrate this point, we make use of the notion of ‘configuration’ and ‘script’ which we borrow from Actor-Network Theory and Feminist Science and Technology Studies (Woolgar 1991, Akrich 1992, Oudshoorn et al. 2004). Inspired by Woolgar’s prominent metaphor of ‘machine as a text’, we will position the engineer not as an individual on its own, but as an assemblages of semiotic-material practices by which the concept of engineering is given a particular form. Finally, drawing on the concept of the ‘script’ , we will employ curricular as educational scripts to provide insights on reconfiguring of the engineer.

Authors

• Cansu Güner, Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS)

• Emine Onculer Yayalar, Bilkent University