First-year engineering students' views of the nature of engineering: implications for engineering programmes

Abstract

A study was conducted on the views of the nature of engineering held by 114 first-year engineering majors; the study built on prior work on views of the nature of science held by students, their instructors, and the general public. Open-coding analysis of responses to a 12-item questionnaire suggested that the participants held tacit beliefs that engineering (1) involves problem solving; (2) is a form of applied science; (3) involves the design of artefacts or systems; (4) is subject to various constraints; and (5) requires teamwork. These beliefs, however, were often unsophisticated, and significant aspects of the field of engineering as described in the literature on engineering practices were missing from the student responses. The results of this study are important because students' beliefs have a strong influence on what they value in a classroom situation, what they attend to in class, and how they choose to study for a course.

Keywords:

• creativity
• definition of engineering
• engineering design
• first-year engineering
• the nature of engineering
• philosophies of engineering
• qualitative research

About the authors

Faik Ö. Karataş is an Assistant Professor of Chemical/Science Education at Karadeniz Technical University. He earned his PhD in the College of Education at Purdue University. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Education from Karadeniz Technical University in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Some of his current research interests include problem solving in chemistry and chemical engineering, epistemology of science and engineering, teaching and learning science and engineering in informal settings.

George M. Bodner is the Arthur E. Kelly Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Education, and Engineering at Purdue University, where he has been head of the Division of Chemical Education in the Department of Chemistry and a member of the faculty of the newly constituted Department of Engineering Education. He also serves as one of the board of directors of the American Chemical Society.

Suat Ünal is an Associate Professor and head of the Division of Chemistry Education at Karadeniz Technical University. He teaches chemistry and pedagogies at both graduate and undergraduate levels. He has a wide range of research interests including the determination of students' misconceptions, design and implementation of instructions to remediate students' misconception, and computer-aided instruction to achieve conceptual change. He has about 30 articles published in a range of national and international journals, and acts as a reviewer for some of them.