Enculturation in Applied Science: An Exploration of the Factors Influencing Dispositions of Undergraduate Engineering Students Toward the Environment

• In Event: Higher Education, Science, and Society

Abstract

Engineering curricula focus largely on the development of technical knowledge and skills: ‘the knowing’ and ‘the doing’ of engineering. Environmental decisions in professional practice are significantly configured by the values, identity and ethics of engineers in industry and decision-making positions. This study focuses on ‘the being’ and ‘the becoming’ or engineers: the culture, identities and ethics that develop in the lived experience of an undergraduate engineering education. This mixed-methods study at a large Western Canadian university employs critical ethnographic methods to articulate processes of enculturation and identity formation and will inform efforts to reconceptualize engineering education. The professional ethics symbolized by ‘The Iron Ring’ must, by environmental necessity rather than sentimental luxury, be extended to the non-human world.

Author

• Chris David Campbell, The University of British Columbia