ABSTRACT
Suellen Shay’s work on higher education curricula foregrounds the importance of professional curricula which face inwards to disciplines and outwards to practice. This paper builds on her framing of professional curricula, distinctive in the differentiated knowledge base and the social relations which legitimate them. I extend Shay’s work deeper into the internal governance structures underpinning curriculum decisions in engineering. Two dimensions of governance are explored: central control from the Faculty of Engineering over its departments; and the authority of individuals in department-level curriculum and accreditation roles over their colleagues. The empirical focus is on curricula reform towards ‘graduate attributes’ in engineering education, through a comparative study of eight universities in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Singapore, and Australia. The findings show that research-intensive universities are shielded from the full implications of accreditation requirements, while teaching-intensive universities are more likely to invest in developing the governance processes and systems demanded by professional bodies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Shay’s work is part of an intense concentration of social realist scholarship on engineering education which is particularly strong in South Africa, such as the work of Case, Wolff, Smit, Wolmarans and others.
2 There is some irony in this omission, given Shay’s research started out with a central focus on assessment and evaluation of student work. This point is not meant to critique her understanding of the pedagogic device, which was impressive, but rather to highlight that she did not utilize all fields of the device in her analysis of professions.
3 Different universities use different terms; while Associate Dean was the most common term, some used Vice Dean instead.