When world(view)s collide: contested epistemologies and ontologies in transdisciplinary education

• Autores: Colin M. Gray, Todd M. Fernandez
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 34, no. Extra 2 (Parte B), 2018, págs. 574-589
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In conjunction with the drive towards human-centered design in engineering education, questions arise regarding howstudents build and engage a socially-aware engineering identity, and how this identity points towards beliefs about thenature of reality. In this paper, we describe how students in a transdisciplinary undergraduate program struggle to engagewith ontological and epistemological perspectives that draw on this social turn, particularly in relation to human-centeredengineering approaches and sociotechnical complexity. We use a critical qualitative meaning reconstruction approach todeeply analyze the meaning-making assumptions of the students. Our findings reveal characteristic barriers in engagingwith other subjectivities, and related epistemological and ontological claims implicit in these subjectivities. Specifically, weshow that students’ observable behaviors often mask misalignments between their epistemic beliefs and the designerlypractices they employ—failing to account for the multiple subjective realities that the tools are designed to uncover. Forthese students, that misalignment makes the learning or practice of designerly behaviors less formative of a designerlyidentity. We conclude with implications for encouraging socially-aware identity formation in engineering education.