Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING CAPACITY: EDUCATION, TRAINING AND MOBILITYsubjects along with the delivery of specific courses related tothe environment, and if the other disciplines need the optionof an environmental major in their discipline area, then there isperhaps considerable opportunity for growth within the EnvironmentalEngineering discipline.The United Nations International Decade of Education forSustainable Development (2005–2014) 65 provides a timelyreminder that society is expecting change across the professions.As part of this, Environmental Engineering faces a particularlychallenging transition, as it both evolves and assistsother disciplines. However, rather than being in a threateningpredicament where the progress of other disciplines in thisarea may make environmental engineering redundant, thereis a opportunity for the discipline to play a pivotal role, andin doing so redefine its niche. Perhaps the EnvironmentalEngineering department or school of today will not exist inits current form in 10–15 years time. Rather it may evolve toprovide significant capacity-building services to other disciplinesin addition to offering programmes that provide a moreintegrated understanding of natural and manmade systemsthat work in harmony to increase natural, social and economiccapital.7.3.5Research in engineeringeducationErik de Graaff and Anette KolmosIntroductionEngineering is a practice-oriented profession. For a long time,the training of future engineers took was delivered in theworkplace. After the establishment of engineering schools inthe nineteenth century, the link to engineering practice alwaysstayed important. Engineers were trained for professionalpractice, not for careers as scientists. This approach lasted thebest part of the twentieth century.After the Second World War, the proportion of the populationthat participated in higher education increased substantially.Following the increase in the number of students, politiciansand administrators called for greater efficiency. Institutesbecame bigger and bigger. As a consequence, teachingand learning in higher education has turned into a topic forresearch and innovation in its own right. Pedagogical centreswere founded at universities in countries in Northwest Europeto train teaching staff and to support the improvement ofeducation with research and development.65 UN General Assembly. 2002. Proclamation of the Decade of Education of SustainableDevelopment (2005–2014), 57th Session, UN General Assembly. Go to: www.desd.org/Engineering education has a particular place in higher education.In the Netherlands for instance, the academic level of theInstitute of Technology in Delft was recognized in 1905 yet itwasn’t until 1986 that it was officially designated a university.Within higher engineering education, two different types ofschools can be recognized: the more theory-oriented programmesat universities and the more practice-oriented programmesat universities of applied sciences. This distinctionis carried on in the form of theoretical and applied bachelorprogrammes in the bachelor-master structure adopted in theBologna Process.The emergence of research and development centres forhigher education in EuropeThe increasing number of students participating in highereducation resulted in a general call for higher efficiency of thecurricula. Educational research – aiming to figure out what elementscontributed to efficiency and how it could be improved– was started at different institutions. To find out how toachieve this and to provide the necessary support, universitiesin the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavian countries setup their own research and development centres (Kolmos etal., 2001). 66 The historical developments in the Netherlands aredepicted in the section below as an example for the developmentsin other European countries.During the 1960s, universities in the Netherlands needed toadjust their teaching methods in order to deal with mass highereducation (Wiegersma, 1989). 67 Innovation and improvementsoon became keywords in dealing with this issue. In ascientific environment it seems natural that research plays amajor part in order to establish a solid foundation for qualityimprovement. As it was put by a reporter at the end of the firstnational convention on ‘Research of Higher Education’ in theNetherlands in 1966, ‘…what is needed is to establish contactbetween the people who are concerned with the teaching ofscience and those who are engaged with the science of teaching’(Vroeiijenstijn, 1981). 68At first, this type of research was mostly conducted by externalexperts or by isolated individual researchers. The scientificbackground of these researchers has been interdisciplinaryright from the start as they came from social science, humanities,science and engineering. Most Dutch universities establishedan Institute for Research of Higher Education (RWO66 Kolmos, A., Rump, Ingemarsson, I., Laloux, A., and Vinther, O. 2001. Organization ofStaff Development – Strategies and Experiences. European Journal of Engineering Education,Vol. 26, No. 4. pp. 329–342.67 Wiegersma, S. 1989. Innovatie van het hoger onderwijs [Innovation in Higher education].Hoger onderwijsreeks. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff.68 Vroeijensteijn, A. (red.) 1981. Kwaliteitsverbetering Hoger Onderwijs [Improvement ofquality in Higher Education]. Proceedings of the fourth national convention Researchin Higher Education, December 1-180-1981. Eindhoven: Stichting Nationaal Congres/1981.347