EJEE Editorial for Special Issue: Research Methodologies that link theory and practice

Many of the papers in this special issue have been developed from presentations at the 2015 Research in Engineering Symposium (REES) in Dublin. This symposium was held in collaboration with the Research in Engineering Education Network (REEN) (www.reen.co), and was focussed around the theme of Translating Research into Practice.

This theme was topical at the time because, despite Lewin’s (1951) Maxim, which states that there is ‘nothing as practical as a good theory’, tensions had been developing in some parts of the engineering education community between those who undertake theoretical research and those whose work is more practically oriented.

While most controversy surrounds methods and educational research norms, issues with audience and inclusivity, i.e. what work is classified as research, ‘remain a source of tension in the broader engineering education community’ (Borrego 2007). Issues with audience include questions of whether the research should be written for other researchers, or for practitioners – those in the classrooms teaching engineering.

At ten different engineering education conferences during 2007 and 2008, (Jesiek, Borrego, and Beddoes 2010, 125) ‘observed generally high levels of agreement and consensus’ on the importance of strong linkages between engineering education research and the practice of teaching engineering. These include issues of practice influencing the research agenda, research findings being disseminated to engineering educators and embedded in their teaching practice, and a cyclic relationship between the two. In other words, research generates innovative practice that is evaluated and may lead to further research that is again implemented.

These findings do not align with the perceived North American push to privilege theoretical research over practice-based studies generated by the editorial agenda of the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE), and artefacts such as the four levels of rigour in inquiry about teaching and learning (Streveler, Borrego, and Smith 2007). Felder and Hadgraft (2013, 339) refer to ‘two divergent and sometimes antagonistic groups’.

In the field of mathematics education research there does not seem to be the same tension between theoretical and practice-based research that is evident in the engineering education community. Practice and sharing practice are both valued as contributing to a body of knowledge:

Where several colleagues find that they recognize each other's descriptions of incidents and phenomena, a body of shared experiences accumulates, which serves to enhance noticing in the future. By ‘noticing the noticing’, or in other words by labeling a collection of experiences with a descriptive term, that term can contribute to a framework that enhances noticing in the future. It is as if something inside generalizes from the particular, triggers the label, and so provides access to the collection of responses and comments on such situations which have been accumulated through collegial sharing. (Mason 1998, 367)

Interestingly, Jesiek, Borrego, and Beddoes (2010) suggest that the people who typically attend engineering education conferences are:

staff/faculty interested in improving their teaching; staff/faculty presenting their scholarship of teaching and learning; engineering deans/heads of school and heads of department; researchers and other scholars who study engineering education; and industry/government employees or similar stakeholders in engineering education. (Jesiek, Borrego, and Beddoes 2010, 123)

They note the importance of engineering education conferences as times and places where dialogue occurs about engineering education, both its research and its practice. However, they refer to engineering education researchers and engineering educators as if they are two different groups of people, which seems to be the dominant discourse in the USA: ‘These ideas suggest, for example, that engineering instructors should be enrolled as equal and active partners in engineering education research’ (Jesiek, Borrego, and Beddoes 2010, 130).

At one of the European conference workshops, Jesiek et al.'s participants suggested that engineering educators should be encouraged to become engineering education researchers, that is, researchers who are a subset of engineering educators, rather than a separate group. This would involve ‘giving engineering instructors the right knowledge, methods and tools so they could research their own questions and ‘solve their own problems’ (Jesiek, Borrego, and Beddoes 2010, 127).

While the USA approach has been to illustrate how typical engineering research is different from educational research, the Europeans have taken a more holistic and philosophical approach in exploring how engineering education research is engineering. Bernhard (2015) refutes the claim by Borrego (2007) that engineering education research is fundamentally different from engineering and in doing so argues the importance of practice and the practical context for theory development in engineering education and engineering education research. Design based thinking is central to the practice of engineering and hence it is not surprising to see it used as a framework supporting investigation, as shown in the articles by Carstensen and Bernhard and by Hira and Hynes in this issue; as well as a phenomenon to investigate (see Goldstein et al. and Holland et al.).

Bernhard and Baillie (2016) argue that no one research approach should dominate the engineering education research domain, and hence assessment criteria, either for publications or grants, should not be written to privilege one type of research over another. They note that aspects of quality research that have largely been missing in the domain are methodological and epistemological awareness and consistency. Various conceptual frameworks and research methodologies have been developed to take the messiness, the confounding variables and complex factors which abound in practice, into account. In this special issue papers on action research (Cicele et al.), engaged scholarship (Shawcross and Ridgman) and practice architectures theory (Goldsmith et al.) are examples of such methodologies. The paper by Shekhar et al. is also useful in showing how qualitative research methods can support the development of a survey instrument in a mixed methods study.

Baillie and Bernhard (2009) see an understanding of practice as an important aspect of theory development, as noted in their introduction to another special issue of the European Journal of Engineering Education (EJEE):

We have tried to make it clear, in this introduction, how different theories have been used as tools in different studies and how the authors by intertwining and making syntheses contribute to theory development as well to the development of engineering education. This is at the very heart of successful approaches in engineering where the development of theory and practice goes hand in hand. (Baillie and Bernhard 2009, 293)

The European perspective then is that research and practice should complement each other rather than compete with each other.

When researchers in engineering education are also engaged in classroom teaching their research is likely to influence their teaching as much as their teaching influences their research, much as described by Manson:

It has been noted by almost everyone engaged in research that the person who learns the most is the researcher, no matter how well reports are written, how widely findings are communicated, or what other products produced. Questions that seem clear and focused are refined, changed, even transformed; conjectures are modified, sometimes confirmed, sometimes denied, and sometimes remain indeterminate. Throughout this process, the researchers’ perspective develops, their sensitivities increase. They see more, make more and finer distinctions. They experience shifts in what they find fruitful to study, in the distinctions they are able to make, in their appreciation of the researched situation and of similar situations, and what constitutes a similar situation. In this sense, the researchers can be said to be learning about themselves as much as about the situation being studied. Instead of thinking of the situation being studied as being acted upon by the researcher, there is a sense in which the studying of the situation performs an action upon the researcher. (Mason 1998, 369)

The paper by Borgford-Parnell et al. describes a framework for teachers to reflect on their practice and includes examples of researchers reflecting on their teaching practices. Such researchers are also able to influence the practices of other engineering education researchers because they will be reading the relevant literature.

The most extensive sphere of influence is when engineering education research impacts those engineering educators who do not engage with the educational literature. This is the most difficult level of influence to achieve. While there are many implications for practice in the engineering education research literature, these implications do not yet seem to have significantly influenced mainstream practice (Prince, Felder, and Brent 2007). Many engineering academics are still using lecture-based teaching despite the overwhelming evidence for active learning (Freeman et al. 2014), and

 … although more effective teaching methods have been overwhelmingly demonstrated, most STEM courses are still taught by lectures …  (Wieman 2014, 8320)

Cretchley et al. (2014) found that the professoriate in Australian science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculties across a range of universities does not value the literature and conference participation that pertains to learning and teaching: ‘The low value these professors accord higher education as an area of research activity and academic discourse is clear’ (Cretchley et al. 2014, 664). This would explain why they do not engage with this literature. These researchers call for efforts to

support and reward academics across a range of disciplines to research in areas of higher education, and discourse on L&T [learning and teaching], and strategies to ensure that higher education research brings the same professional rewards as research in other fields. (Cretchley et al. 2014, 665)

Krause (2014) reports similar findings in relation to history and mathematics academics, and notes:

[These academics have] limited avenues for informed debate on a range of epistemological issues that lie at the heart of how curricula are designed and how students learn in disciplinary settings. (Krause 2014, 17)

She recommends

examining academic staff perceptions of how and what students learn in disciplinary settings. [This] also involves taking account of the complex factors influencing how academics define their work and their identity, including the influence of disciplinary cultures and how to foster communities within and across disciplines. (Krause 2014, 17)

Such discipline-based educational research has the potential to develop what Sadler (2011) described as a hybrid academic made up of two parts:

[One part is] constituted by expertise in the substantive field of scholarship, research and professional practice; the other part would be constituted by expertise as members of the guild of educators in that substantive field. The two parts together are constitutive of the academic as a distinct category or profession. The challenge is to further clarify and develop this identity. (Sadler 2011, 91)

This special issue includes articles which demonstrate this discipline-based educational research, investigating phenomena relevant to the engineering context such as the development of spatial skills (Veurink & Sorby, and Buckley et al.), feedback on design projects (Marbouti et al.), supporting the ability to address ‘wicked’ problems (Lönngren et al.), enhancing concept inventories (Goncher & Boles) and increasing student engagement, either online (DeBoer et al. and Minichiello et al.) or face to face (Khan et al.).

However, many engineering academics will not choose to undertake scholarship in teaching and learning as it requires a different way of thinking from their traditional research focus and epistemologies (Prince, Felder, and Brent 2007). For many engineering academics the research findings have not changed their practice:

It was a deliberate strategy our community set a decade or more ago – to enact change in engineering education – to generate ‘hard data’ that would convince engineering deans and high level university administrators – even our peers who teach engineering – that we need to change engineering education. Some thought they would listen to the data. But we are finding, with Dewey, that it is not that simple; research has not dictated practice. The causal theory that rigorous data causes change was wrong. (Riley 2014)

Hence other approaches need to be adopted if research is to influence mainstream engineering education. As engineering education researchers we can take a grass roots approach and work with a colleague who may want to change their teaching practice but is not sure how to go about it. Working closely with such a colleague for a teaching session in a coaching type of role can be personally and professionally satisfying but is limited to changing one course/unit/subject at a time. An alternative approach likely to have wider impact is more of a top down approach as engineering education researchers in positions of responsibility can influence teaching and assessment policy of the institution.

In the first paragraph we said that the theme of translating research into practice was topical at the time of the 2015 REES. Interest in this theme is such that we are sure it will continue to generate discussion for some time to come.