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Engineering judgment is critical to both engineering education and engineering practice, and the ability to practice or participate in engineering judgment is often considered central to the formation of professional engineering identities. In practice, engineers must make difficult judgments that evaluate potentially competing objectives, ambiguity, uncertainty, incomplete information, and evolving technical knowledge. Nonetheless, while engineering judgment is implicit in engineering work and so central to identification with the profession, educators and practitioners have few actionable frameworks to employ when considering how to develop and assess this capacity in students. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework designed to inform both educators and researchers that positions engineering judgment at the intersection of the cognitive dimensions of naturalistic decision-making, and discursive dimensions of identity. Our proposed theory positions engineering judgment not only as an individual capacity practiced by individual engineers alone but also as the capacity to position oneself within the discursive community so as to participate in the construction of engineering judgments among a group of professionals working together. Our theory draws on several strands of existing research to theorize a working framework for engineering judgment that considers the cognitive processes associated with making judgments and the inextricable discursive practices associated with negotiating those judgments in context. In constructing this theory, we seek to provide engineering education practitioners and researchers with a framework that can inform the design of assignments, curricula, or experiences that are intended to foster students’ participation in the development and practice of engineering judgment.
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Exploring the role of engineering judgment in engineer identity formation through student technical reports
The engineering disciplines are rigorous in their application of scientific principles, and these principles are the ones most directly addressed in undergraduate engineering classrooms. However, engineers are also called to make decisions that implicitly account for complex criteria, including the welfare of those who use or are impacted by the systems engineers design and the economic needs of their employers. As a result, engineering is an art that requires practitioners to routinely navigate difficult tradeoffs that require professional judgments. These judgments include economic, ethical, social, and value-based dimensions. These dimensions can be conflicting, increasing the complexity of practice and foregrounding the prominence of judgment. And often, these judgements need to be explained to colleagues, managers, and clients through a range of written documents. Yet little work to date has investigated the relationship between the writing engineering students do and the development of engineering judgement, particularly in terms of how these facets intersect in students developing engineering identities . Therefore, the overall goal of this project is to elucidate the interactions between how students’ identification with the engineering profession impacts the way they convey engineering judgments to different audiences.
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- PAR ID:
- 10287772
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 4
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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In response to chemical process incidents, the ABET criteria for chemical engineering programs has expanded to include an emphasis on the understanding of hazards associated with chemical processes. This requirement has oftentimes been met with a focus on system design and requirements. However, experts are coming to recognize that human error and judgements can be contributing factors in serious accidents. Poor judgements are a risk of individuals inaccurately predicting their actions, and engineers are not immune to these risks, especially when they are considering how to make tradeoffs with process safety criteria. Where engineers may believe to be prioritizing safety, their behaviors may demonstrate otherwise, which risks the well-being of others. For example, the Pryor Trust well blowout and Chevron refinery explosion may have both been exacerbated due to engineers inadequately making trade offs between safety and productivity demands. It is possible to minimize poor judgments caused by inaccurate predictions by reconciling self-held beliefs with actions actually taken. The purpose of this paper is to describe a pilot study with five senior level engineering students that aims to facilitate understanding whether they have any gaps between their beliefs and behaviors regarding competing criteria in a process safety context. The project is driven by the following four research questions: 1) What do engineers believe about how they make judgements; 2) How do they behave when actually making judgements; 3) What gap, if any, exists between their beliefs and behavior; and 4) How do they reconcile any gap between their beliefs and behavior? To begin answering these questions, we will interview subjects on their beliefs using a semi-structured interview format. We will then obtain data on subjects’ actual behaviors through a recently developed process safety digital game, Contents Under Pressure. Finally, we will compare the subjects’ responses to similar dilemmas in both contexts to then generate a Gap Profile that provides a visual of differences, if they exist. Subjects will then be asked to reconcile their Gap Profile in a subsequent interview.more » « less
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In response to chemical process incidents, the ABET criteria for chemical engineering programs has expanded to include an emphasis on the understanding of hazards associated with chemical processes. This requirement has oftentimes been met with a focus on system design and requirements. However, experts are coming to recognize that human error and judgements can be contributing factors in serious accidents. Poor judgements are a risk of individuals inaccurately predicting their actions, and engineers are not immune to these risks, especially when they are considering how to make tradeoffs with process safety criteria. Where engineers may believe to be prioritizing safety, their behaviors may demonstrate otherwise, which risks the well-being of others. For example, the Pryor Trust well blowout and Chevron refinery explosion may have both been exacerbated due to engineers inadequately making trade offs between safety and productivity demands. It is possible to minimize poor judgments caused by inaccurate predictions by reconciling self-held beliefs with actions actually taken. The purpose of this paper is to describe a pilot study with five senior level engineering students that aims to facilitate understanding whether they have any gaps between their beliefs and behaviors regarding competing criteria in a process safety context. The project is driven by the following four research questions: 1) What do engineers believe about how they make judgements; 2) How do they behave when actually making judgements; 3) What gap, if any, exists between their beliefs and behavior; and 4) How do they reconcile any gap between their beliefs and behavior? To begin answering these questions, we will interview subjects on their beliefs using a semi-structured interview format. We will then obtain data on subjects’ actual behaviors through a recently developed process safety digital game, Contents Under Pressure. Finally, we will compare the subjects’ responses to similar dilemmas in both contexts to then generate a Gap Profile that provides a visual of differences, if they exist. Subjects will then be asked to reconcile their Gap Profile in a subsequent interview.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE44824.2020.9273970
