Australian engineering educators’ attitudes towards Aboriginal cultures and perspectives

ABSTRACT

In Australia, representation of Aboriginal populations within the engineering profession is very low despite participation targets set by Government departments, professional bodies and Universities. Progressing the Aboriginal inclusion agenda within Australian Engineering Education requires a clearer understanding of engineering educators’ preparedness for increased numbers of students from this non-traditional cohort. This research stems from a recently completed project that explored Aboriginal perspectives in engineering education and proposed a model for embedding perspectives in curricula. Nine engineering academics were interviewed to explore attitudes towards Aboriginal perspectives in engineering and the viability of the proposed model. Results of the interviews indicate efforts to embed Aboriginal perspectives are starting from a small base of knowledge and experience. Individuals’ motivations and values indicate that there is significant support for improving this, but that efforts can be hampered by conceptions of Aboriginal perspectives that do not consider how Aboriginal knowledges may change engineering itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum design
• cultural aspects
• diversity
• Indigenous knowledge

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Erratum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Tom Goldfinch is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering Education at the University of Wollongong and President of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education. His key areas of scholarly practice is the social and cultural aspects of engineering education and practice. Tom has led major Australian government funded projects including ‘Integrating Indigenous student support through Indigenous perspectives embedded in engineering curricula’ and ‘Exploring Intercultural Competency in Engineering’.

Dr Juliana Kaya Prpic is an educator and researcher in the Engineering Learning Unit at the University of Melbourne. She teaches two multidisciplinary project-based subjects – ‘Leading Change in a Complex World’ and ‘Sustainability in Developing Communities’, where student teams have repeatedly won the State final in the Engineers without Borders Challenge. She also serves as an Indigenous Engineering Education Coordinator. She has supervised Ph.D. theses, and has numerous publications in the field of Engineering Education. Her research interests include Indigenous education, transdisciplinary and multi-cultural ways of knowing, transformational learning and reflective practice.

Dr Elyssebeth Leigh has been a professional educator for more than 30 years and has worked in a variety of contexts mainly with adult students in both business and academic contexts. As an experienced designer of simulations and games, she has worked in many different multi-cultural context including assignments in Africa and conferences and workshops in Russia, Finland, India and Romania. She also leads – FutureSearch – an educational consultancy using action and experiential learning and simulations and games for organisational development and personal improvement.

Dr Lesley Jolly is an anthropologist who has worked with engineers since 1996 through a variety of research projects, the supervision of Ph.D. students in engineering problems that have social dimensions and through the Australasian Association for Engineering Education. Dr Jolly has run workshops on research methods and educational evaluation in Australia and New Zealand and was co-founder of the AAEE Winter School in Engineering Education Research. Much of her recent work has been in evaluating research projects and educational programmes, not only in engineering but from primary education onwards and in Philosophy as well as in STEM disciplines.

Jade Kennedy is a Yuin man from the Illawarra and South Coast of NSW. He has been privileged with intimate knowledge’s of his peoples customs, culture and Country, and has for the past 16 years worked within various roles at the University of Wollongong. The coming together of these two worlds for Jade has resulted in his focusing on incorporating and embedding Aboriginal knowledges within tertiary education curriculum. Jade is also currently undertaking a Ph.D. exploring the impacts of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage on Engineering project management.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Office for Learning and Teaching [grant number ID13-2899].