The CDIO Initiative is first and foremost an endeavour to improve engineering education, but in the 12th International CDIO Conference in 2016, a special track is opened for engineering education research (EER). This paper aims to clarify some tensions within the emerging EER field, and show how CDIO can contribute in shaping the field.
The fundamental definitional question for EER regards the aims of research: is it to improve educational practice, or to seek new knowledge for its own sake? These are not mutually exclusive categories, but it is a matter of precedence in definitions of quality. If the aim is to produce new knowledge, it is a task of proving something and the main criterion is truth (or rigour). If the aim is to inform improvement, the consideration for usefulness will be most important. Considering the balance and relationship is not merely an abstract exercise of ideas and ideals, because the definition of quality is always intertwined with the question of who is the legitimate judge of it. There are implications for legitimacy and power, and real consequences for the people within engineering education and its stakeholder groups.
This is of course a classic discussion for all research, and the debate has been lively within higher education and in society at large, not least with the expansion of research and higher education in recent decades. Work by Brooks (1967), Boyer (1990) and Gibbons et al. (1994) provides useful concepts for understanding the tensions within EER, including the underlying values and interests on each side of the argument.
The conclusion is that although there is a tension, both sets of values will always apply, since success depends on internal recognition as well as external legitimacy. The tension must therefore be reconciled – but not glossed over. The values on both sides of the balance must be safeguarded and we must see through hollow claims. For instance, disciplines have an interest in referring to usefulness to legitimate the resources spent on research. Conversely, there is an interest in attaching the research label to what is really development, to improve status and opportunities for career and funding. In all circumstances, EER needs quality mechanisms to weed out work that is neither true nor useful.
The balance and relationship between truth/rigour and usefulness is both a philosophical and practical question, on an individual and collective level. For individual researchers the tension is at the heart of every inquiry: do I consider ‘what can be useful’ or ‘what can be known’? Or (how) can my work be simultaneously useful and credible? For the field, there are implications for peer review practice, for upholding borders and forming relationships between research/researchers and development/developers.
In the CDIO Initiative, we must understand this tension and create a working and productive relationship between the two aims. Otherwise we risk ending up in camps and weakening the community in an internal, eternal, trench war. Success means creating legitimacy for the research that is simultaneously credible and contributes to the improvement of engineering education.
Proceedings of the 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland, June 12-16 2016