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This article explores the concept of engineers' boundary work, focusing on their professional knowledge and interaction strategies as they navigate complex challenges. It discusses how engineers establish and defend their professional boundaries, as well as the role of gender and race in shaping these boundaries. The article also examines how engineers adapt and expand their roles, including taking on management and business responsibilities. It highlights the resistance to interdisciplinary education in engineering schools and the strategic manipulation of boundaries within collaborative projects. Additionally, the article explores the relationship between engineering and environmental activism, and the evolving attitudes towards integrating activism into professional identity. Overall, the article emphasizes that engineers' boundary work is influenced by social hierarchies and cultural norms, and is continuously renegotiated in response to changing responsibilities and societal expectations. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores three different forms of negotiation implemented by environmentalist engineers between their professional work and their environmental activism. These engineers, members of environmentalist organizations, appropriate in different ways this conceptual professional boundary that separates and opposes the social worlds of engineering and activism. The article draws from narrative interviews with 50 environmentalist engineers that focused on the dynamics of these negotiations and their effects on biographical trajectories. The process of conforming, shifting or overstepping the boundary between profession and activism is linked to the framing of environmental causes. The precarious balances these engineers strike between work and activism thus depend on three factors: the emergence (or not) of a professional reflexivity, the adoption (or not) of a political interpretation and the reaction of hierarchical superiors and company management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positioned as part of leadership development in many organizations, 'stretch assignments' are a type of work assignment that can prove someone's readiness to advance in their career. Informed by status characteristics theory, our research investigates the frequency and expected outcomes of stretch assignments among recent engineering graduates in the workforce. Findings suggest that early-career stretch assignments, especially assignments involving new and unfamiliar areas, potentially intensify gender and racial/ethnic workforce inequality. Other types of assignments that may be more familiar and clearly-scoped to early-career engineers show a different and less inequality-intensifying pattern. We discuss why early-career engineers' assignments may be sites of inequality and the need for more focus on organizational processes around career-advancing work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the journal Engineering Studies, which has been publishing interdisciplinary work on gender, race, and power in engineering for the past fifteen years. It highlights special issues on engineering masculinities, exclusion and inclusion in engineering education, and gender dynamics in industrial design. The article also provides a list of articles published by the journal on these topics, emphasizing their high citation and readership rates. It acknowledges the lack of geographic diversity in the research, with most of the work coming from the US and Europe. The article then focuses on three specific articles in the issue that explore the experiences of early-career engineers and the impact of gender and race on their career opportunities. It concludes by encouraging more diverse research in terms of geographic locations and topics. [Extracted from the article]

While many early-career engineers in the United States leave the field of engineering in the first few years of their careers, we know little of their early professional experiences and reasoning for career plans. We conducted 33 semi-structured interviews with early-career engineers, comparing the experiences of engineers across intersections of gender and race. In particular, we examine meaningful early-career experiences and how these connect to the innate needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, as well as career intentions. Top moments on the job were often first-time experiences and milestones that enhanced the engineers' sense of competence. Meaningful moments connected to relatedness were more often positive than negative experiences for White men, whereas experiences undermining relatedness were more common for people of color and/or women. Connections to autonomy emerged more in bottom moments, especially for White engineers. Across different intended career pathways, early-career engineers often evaluated their experiences regarding their ability to work effectively and through social validation from peers and managers (or undermined by a lack thereof). The results indicate the need for a greater understanding of early-career affordances in supporting entry and retention in the engineering workforce by promoting individual effectiveness and social validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the things I appreciate about the engineering studies community is that we are welcoming of new scholars, both those who are early in their career and those who are turning to engineering studies after having developed their career in other academic spaces. I insist that my students and potential authors minimize the passive voice whenever possible not just for the reasons of clarity, described above, but because of the philosophical and epistemological differences undergirding the language we use. The passive voice exemplifies what Donna Haraway called "a view from above, from nowhere".[3] It presumes that knowledge is objective and that the context of the research and the personhood of the researcher are irrelevant. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the relationship between humans and other animals, technology, and engineering practices in a project testing Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in the arctic. Generally, roads are engineered to promote efficiency and predictability for transport. However, in the arctic northern region of Norway, animals sometimes challenge these virtues. Using Goffman's notion of frames and Callon's concept of overflow as theoretical starting points, the article explores how transport engineers develop intelligent transport infrastructure and envision ways of including animals and other non-humans in the engineers' framing of the road. The engineers first and foremost implement new technological artefacts, which allow them to survey the road in a manner which makes nature's overflows onto the road more manageable. However, these artefacts do not merely contain nature in the engineers' frame—the engineers also envision humans, in this case, motorists, to change their practices. As such, the engineers' attempts to contain animals in a particular frame entail using technology to assemble a new relationship between nature and culture. Taking nature into account when planning and developing infrastructure means reassembling a particular nature-culture relationship. Thus, the article points out that in order to engineer nature, it is also necessary to engineer culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering occupations coevolved with industries producing material outputs: mining, construction, manufacturing. Yet wealthy economies have long been moving toward intangible services, the products of industries including finance, wholesale and retail trade, entertainment, travel and transportation, health care, and the public sector (including, e.g. much of education). For the United States the shift is evident in statistical data going back well over a century and services now account for nearly 90 percent of all employment. The job share is lower for engineers, but even so the majority work for service-producing entities. Entanglement and interdependence of services and goods hinders understanding of the dynamics, as does rapid growth in jobs classed in official employment statistics as computer-related even though much of the work resembles engineering. Because of this, field studies that explore actual job content will be needed to develop clearer pictures of the everyday tasks employers assign technical workers in postindustrial economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineers rely on communication skills to collaborate and make decisions across boundaries. This research seeks to examine an under-explored communication practice of engineers in work environments – persuasive communication. Research on persuasive communication (i.e. practices seeking to influence) includes extensive explorations within laboratory settings and certain contexts (e.g. healthcare, politics), yet should be further expanded within the engineering context. Using a multiple case study approach, we explored engineers' communication practices across three organizations as they sought to negotiate, build consensus, persuade, and make decisions across boundaries. Engineers within this study commonly used persuasive communication to gain access to resources, align goals, and influence design decisions. These practices are presented through three narratives constructed based on the analysis of interviews and meeting observations as well as a rich understanding of the context. The narratives illustrate six emergent features of persuasive communication: (1) emotional engagement, (2) credibility of those involved, (3) audience consideration and power dynamics, (4) timing, (5) adaptability, and (6) shared situation awareness. These results highlight the pervasiveness of persuasive communication within engineering practice, providing a foundation for future work. The findings also have implications for supporting the development of engineering students and early career engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

They note that I representation i is a characteristic feature of many models in science and in engineering design, and that scientific and engineering models differ more gradually than fundamentally. I Third i , due to the view of engineering as "wicked" technical problem-solving, and as already mentioned, engineering knowledge (how) is not considered an end goal of engineering. I First i , they all agree that we need to move beyond the long-debunked but still popular characterization of engineering as "applied science".[7] I Second i , most authors replace the latter characterization with the more appropriate conceptualization of engineering as "wicked" technical problem-solving. This issue is devoted to Engineering Epistemology, which is understood as the study of how engineers combine descriptive knowledge and normative know-how to address their theoretical and practical, often "wicked", engineering problems.[1] The authors all agree that while the application of scientific knowledge is a necessary ingredient, it is far from sufficient to solve these problems. [Extracted from the article]

Many Russians believe that local engineers are very creative. Historically, however, the numerous inventions created by Russian innovators have rarely ended up as commercialized products. Are Russian engineers indeed creative in comparison to their foreign colleagues? What motivations are associated with this creativity? Is such a shared conception of creativity a barrier to the nation's development of innovations? I propose to answer these questions using interviews with Russian technopreneurs. For comparison with the Russian case, I will use another set of interviews with technopreneurs collected in three countries—South Korea, Taiwan and Finland—each of which can be characterized by different cultural contexts and level of technological development. I summarize the main findings of a collective research project, which employs Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot's idea of 'economies of worth.' The study demonstrates that the basic mixes of 'orders of worth' are varied across the selected countries. In Russia, this mix includes the industrial, the inspired and the market orders; in Taiwan, the market, the industrial and the domestic; in South Korea, the industrial, the domestic and the market; and in Finland, the project-base, the industrial and the market. Focusing on detailed analysis of the worlds of justification among Russian technopreneurs, the article argues that, contrary to the Finnish, South Korean, and Taiwanese cases, creativity and inspiration, together with values of producing technologies for their own sake, are prevailing motivations for Russian engineers. That can explain obstacles in the way of successful commercialization and technological development in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineers value undergraduate research experience as an important step towards becoming an engineer. However, what the word 'experience' means in this context is ambiguous. We draw from qualitative interviews with engineering faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students to identify four categories of experience that they consider relevant to engineering: (1) practical experience: 'real-world' skills and opportunities that resemble the work done in engineering careers and graduate school, (2) social experience: the interpersonal aspects of working with a team, including norms of behavior and communication, (3) professional experience: skills and opportunities that are useful in aspects of students' lives beyond a specific job, such as how to manage their time, and (4) epistemic experience: learning about and applying abstract engineering knowledge. By deriving a typology of 'experience' based on how faculty members and students talk about undergraduate research, this study offers insights into how engineers in universities understand engineering expertise, professionalization, and collaboration. Reflecting on what kinds of 'experience' a good engineer needs also reveals the power dynamics between mentors and novices, and between junior engineers' sometimes conflicting roles as both laborers and learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present work we develop some core ideas to strengthen the inclusion of humanistic knowledge in scientific and technical education sustained in the mainstream definition of engineering provided by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). In order to achieve such a goal we developed a novel formal definition of the term 'judgment' to enlighten the conceptual links between technical rationality and critical thinking in the context of the engineering profession. The analysis intends to overcome some obstacles still present when integrating humanities in engineering training rather than including them as a mere afterthought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the type of engineering practice associated with 'client-focused interprofessional project teams' C-fIPPTs which is a typical pattern of work associated with engineering consulting companies. To do so, the article introduces the concepts of 'situated judgment' and 'immaterial activity' to the Engineering Studies community. It uses these concepts to demonstrate how engineers with different specialisms, working alongside architects, interior designers, etc., resolve competing conceptions of value among members to enable teams to accomplish project-specific issues. The article makes the above argument by drawing on observational data, interviews and field notes to illustrate the immaterial dimension (i.e. converting non-costed ideas into solutions to problems) of such situated judgments. The article concludes by firstly, explaining how the argument it advances about the distinctive features of engineering work contributes to a broadening of research on engineers work practice and, in doing so, the contribution that engineering studies can make to the field of workplace learning. Secondly, the article highlights the implications of its argument for engineering education and workplace learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over two days, participants engaged with questions about what it means to do engineering work, who gets to be an engineer, how engineering graduates can be prepared more effectively, and how engineering practice might be transformed to better serve engineers, employers, and the public. In studies of engineering practice, the early career phase is a particularly intriguing area of inquiry. Since then, an increasing number of researchers have published studies on early career engineering practice; however, such research has remained somewhat limited in scope due to the complexities of the space, the changing demographics of engineering students, and the dynamic nature of engineering practice. [Extracted from the article]

The realities of engineering practice remain opaque and constantly evolving, often leaving graduates underprepared for the workplace and employers dissatisfied with new employees. In this study we shed new empirical light on the lived working experiences of early career engineers in large manufacturing firms. We adopt boundary spanning as the primary framework for our research given growing recognition of its importance in the workplace and potential utility for conceptualizing engineering practice. We specifically address the research question: What kinds of boundary spanning do early career engineers experience in their daily work? Our study is based on interviews with 23 early career engineers analyzed using a thematic analysis approach to code for boundary spanning and other related themes. We then wrote third-person constructed narratives to holistically portray the day-to-day work of three participants. Our findings illustrate how engineers frequently encounter many different types of boundaries and perform specific boundary spanning activities. The narratives also illuminate early career progression, including evidence of increasing leadership responsibilities as engineers navigate evolving job role demands and organizational expectations. We conclude with directions for future research, and discuss how our findings speak to ongoing efforts to reimagine professional practice while improving engineering education and professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has demonstrated that early career socialization experiences play an important role in career outcomes, including learning, performance, satisfaction, and retention. What is not yet well understood, however, is how the organizational socialization experiences of different groups of early career engineers vary and how such variation leads to different career outcomes. By examining the experiences of first year engineers, this article contributes new insights into factors affecting socialization experiences and draws attention to privilege as an important factor shaping engineering socialization experiences. The stories of negative interpersonal interactions experienced by first year women civil engineers are presented and used to glean forms of privilege that affect newcomer socialization. The primary forms of intersectional privilege identified stem from gender and race, with religion and nationality also shaping newcomer experiences. The stories are used to inform proposed additions to a model of engineering socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women engineers in Germany rarely reach the higher management levels of companies. The men-dominated work culture in engineering is regarded as one of the reasons for this. In particular, because there is a masculine 'engineering habitus', the women's habitus conflicts with the field-specific rules. However, successful women engineers are able to deal with and adapt to the 'engineering habitus' to integrate into the profession. This study examines the importance of the help of others in overcoming this problem. It asks how social support promotes the adaptation to an engineering habitus that benefits women engineers who aim to achieve leadership positions. To answer this question, qualitative interviews with women engineers who hold leadership positions were analyzed. The results reveal that the adaptation to the engineering habitus can be facilitated by the social support of various persons. In particular, supervisors, role models, and colleagues introduce women to the work culture and they give them access to higher-status persons. Partners and women's networks provide emotional support to deal with gender-specific challenges and they help to alleviate the conflict between their roles as women, mothers, and engineers. This study deals critically with masculine norms in engineering and highlights the need for an inclusive work culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) is one of the most important engineering institutions for Chinese engineers. The formal establishment of CAE, from its original conception in 1978 to its final birth in 1994, took almost 20 years. At present it has been in existence for two decades. Both the former decades-long emergence and the latter decades-long operation of CAE can be interpreted in terms of an interaction between expertise and politics. To understand the CAE's origins and operation, this paper will first examine how 'engineering' and 'engineer' have slightly different meanings in the historical and cultural context of China than in the West. Then it will focus on the decades-long creation of the CAE. In the 1970s, the proposal for a Chinese engineering academy was initiated by scientist and engineer members of the Chinese Academy of Science, as a result of both domestic and international influences. Through the 1980s and 90s, a few politicians jointly with those scientists and engineers made a crucial contribution to the founding of the CAE. Finally, the article offers an account of CAE's structure and operation during the first twenty years of its existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the mid-2000s, South Korea had become a dominant power in semiconductors, and by the mid-2010s, its worldwide market share of memory had climbed to over 60%. Many scholars have endeavored to discover the secret of the South Korean success but have usually emphasized the roles and contributions of the South Korean government and individual companies in the development of semiconductors, almost totally neglecting those of the South Korean academy. This article analyzes how the South Korean academy contributed to the development and success of the semiconductor industry by examining the life and work of Kim Choong-Ki of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Beginning in 1975, Kim trained the first two generations of semiconductor engineers at KAIST, most of whom became the field's leading figures in academia, at research institutes, and especially in industry. This study is not a biography of Kim but a critical analysis of how a university professor, not an entrepreneur, became the 'godfather' of the semiconductor industry in South Korea. I argue that this was only possible within South Korea's unique triangular relationship among government, industry, and academia during the last quarter of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If it is understood that engineers are 'turning dreams to reality,' then educators share the responsibility for supporting engineers in developing the capacities to consider the future impacts of their decisions. Yet even the most competent engineer's decisions can contribute to macro-ethical failures that arise from narrow problem framing, unevenly distributed risks and benefits, or design solutions unfit for their intended social and cultural contexts. This paper describes how macro-ethical failures can arise at different points in engineering design processes, and considers how competences associated with responsible innovation might assuage those vulnerabilities. To build those competences among future professional engineers, examples of pedagogical approaches are presented at three scales: activities, courses and curricula. For scholars and educators interested in engineering ethics, this article challenges approaches that favor individualistic understandings of responsibility, instead seeking to support learners' awareness of, and ability to, ameliorate macro-ethical failures. For scholars and educators interested in operationalizing responsible innovation as a learning outcome that aligns with engineering practice, we offer an entry point for that conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented which discusses about the approaches in the study of history, science, technology of engineering, the educational research, the topics including engineers and construction of states and the diversity in engineering education, It talks about ability of engineers to aid state construction, mathematician and military engineers of Portuguese, developing mathematical theorems and practice of diverse engineering fields.

The practice of mathematics underwent a major transformation in the seventeenth century due to new procedures and concepts that also showed their utility for military architecture. The circulation of this knowledge can be found in several works. In this paper, we focus on an early work on Portuguese fortifications, Methodo Lusitanico de Desenhar as Fortificaçoens das Praças Regulares & Irregulares (Lusitanic Method of Drawing Fortifications of Regular and Irregular Military Posts), published posthumously in 1680, the author of which was the leading Portuguese Chief Cosmographer and Chief Engineer, Luis Serrão Pimentel (1613-1679). Methodo Lusitanico was a novel work containing the author's own theoretical explorations of the art and science of fortification in Portugal arising from the theoretical investigations and military education sponsored by the Portuguese Crown. The aim of our contribution is to show the European influences on Portuguese science in the seventeenth century through the analysis of an early work on modern fortifications written in the Portuguese language and by a Portuguese scholar. As far as the contents of the book are concerned, we show that Serrão Pimentel analyzes and reviews the published methods of fortification, and modifies them by introducing new procedures to improve the use of mathematics in the teaching of engineers. Our analysis also shows that Serrão Pimentel was a leading mathematician and a skillful teacher who had read the main mathematical works published at his time, such as Stevin's decimal arithmetic, and used them in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with colonial times and continuing to the present, irrigation engineering has been and is an important site for the construction of gendered power and hegemonic masculinities. The strong connection between masculinities and professional irrigation cultures provides one possible explanation of why hydraulic bureaucracies are so resistant to change: it makes behaviours and codes of conduct that are learned seem natural. Taking inspiration from masculinity studies and from feminist studies of technology and organizations, this article proposes two possible lines of inquiry for critically disentangling how the irrigation profession becomes or is made masculine. The first is the feminist historical analysis of water bureaucracies, and the second is a critical ethnography of contemporary irrigation organizations. Such studies are needed both to create more space for women engineers in government water agencies and to contribute to unravelling important cultural aspects of water politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, using the Department of Irrigation in Nepal as a case study, we argue that professional performance in irrigation engineering and water resources development is gendered and normalised as ‘masculine’. In Nepal, the masculinity of professional performance in irrigation engineering is located in intersections of gender, class, caste, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality and disciplinary education, and hinders especially female engineers to perform as a ‘normal’ engineer. Our analysis is based on interviews with male and female engineers in the department, documentation research, and ethnographic observations in the period 2005–2011. Our study suggests that professional performances and engineering identities in the organisation have always been tied to performances of masculinity. This implies that career prospects in the Nepalese irrigation department for female engineers remain grim; because for them to succeed and belong, they have to reconcile the near incommensurable: a performance of a ‘lady engineer’ with that of a ‘normal’ engineer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of science and engineering skills to address the novel challenges of modern society through innovative solutions is regarded as an essential strategy around the world. Many of the studies on innovators, however, are not specific to engineers. To address this gap, this study explored engineers’ views of innovation and the attributes of engineers who create, develop, and implement innovations through in-depth interviews with expert engineering innovators. The study was set in an interpretivist framework and developed a socially constructed description of engineering innovativeness. Forty-five US-based expert engineering innovators were interviewed; these interviews were coded using a grounded-theory approach until categorical saturation was achieved. The results include the identification of 20 characteristics of engineering innovativeness, as well as an ‘engineer’s definition’ of an innovation and several general descriptors of ‘non-innovative’ engineers. The significance of this study comes from its use of detailed qualitative data gathered from peer-recognized innovative engineers from industry, entrepreneurial ventures, and academia to identify and define characteristics of engineering innovativeness in particular. The identification of these characteristics has implications for the training and development of engineers, for engineering team formation and management, and for programs, policies, and interventions aimed at supporting innovative behavior by engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with how engineers working in renewable energies in Germany and Austria position themselves and their professional activity within this relatively new field of engineering occupation by mobilizing a specific androcentric construction of engineering as a symbolic resource. Drawing on qualitative interviews, the argument unfolds in three steps: First, the paper reconstructs how engineers draft an image of their professional activity by symbolically aligning it with established understandings of engineering in traditional areas of engineering occupation and by simultaneously distancing it from allegedly ‘other’ notions of engineering practice that are framed as ‘alternative’. The discursive distinction between professional engineering and its alleged ‘alternative’ counterpart constitutes the former as hard, sincere, structured, and reliable activity based on an instrumental rationality. Second, it is shown how the professional/alternative distinction is gendered with ‘the alternative’ being devaluated and feminized. Consequently, it is argued that there is an implicit association between the discursively constituted idea of professional engineering and masculinity. Third, this discursive construction of engineering is interpreted as a symbolic resource in the engineers’ claim to be recognized as professional actors within renewable energies and, thus, in their struggle for favourable positions within this social field of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study extends previous work on two related phenomena, empathy and care, within engineering. In two phases, we collected and thematically analyzed semi-structured interviews with 25 practicing engineers in order to understand how they conceptualized empathy and care (Phase 1) and in what ways they perceived empathy and care to exist within or be important to engineering practice (Phase 2). Qualitative outcomes of this study include 3 categories with 11 themes that highlight how these phenomena are described by engineers (Phase 1) and 4 categories with 13 themes which depict how engineers perceive these phenomena within their work (Phase 2). Using these results, we consider how empathy and care may be conceptualized within an engineering context, the outcomes of an empathetic/caring engineering process, and contextual and philosophical considerations for integrating empathy/care into engineering practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work examines the qualifications recognition and career development experiences of internationally educated engineers (immigrants to Canada) through the interaction of boundary crossing and liberal fairness ideals embedded in the qualifications recognition process. The work explored how immigrant engineers experienced boundary crossing, evidence for learning at the boundary, and the dynamic tension between immigrant engineers’ personal transitions within structural commitments to standardization and regulation. Data were collected from 18 voluntary participants who had immigrated to Canada and completed a qualifications recognition process to become registered as professional engineers in Canada and who were in active professional engineering practice. The data provided evidence of changes to immigrant engineers’ personal identity and professional practice, where these changes were forms of learning that facilitated the boundary crossing from newcomer to legitimate participant in the Canadian engineering profession. However, the data did not provide evidence of learning as collaborative co-development of new processes forallactors – newcomers and long-time Canadians alike. Instead, the resilience of the Canadian profession to true integration in favour of an expectation of assimilation of newcomer practices into the Canadian mainstream was illuminated, due to the dominance of foundational commitments in the Canadian qualifications recognition processes to liberal fairness ideals as political mechanisms of risk reduction and access to the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we reflect upon the process that frames a particular MSc final capstone project which connects communities of craft women embroiderers and an interdisciplinary team of social scientists and engineers in Colombia. We argue that capstone projects framed by participatory methodologies are characterized by embodied learning processes which in turn are shaped by a tension between that which is learnt by engineers in contact with craft communities and that which is required by engineering schools to certify the skills of engineers in the making. Methodologically, the case study is based on an ethnography of the design process and complemented by an analysis of how capstone projects are narrated by engineers in dialogue with social scientists. Through the case study, we show the different negotiations and contradictions that shape this process and the implications they have for engineering education and final capstone projects in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a case study centered on an engineering design initiative in which engineers invite scientists to participate in an interdisciplinary collaboration aimed at designing an unmanned, underwater robot. Our interviews of faculty and student project participants were the central focus of our analysis, while the knowledge products produced by the participants in the form of journal articles played a role in our formulation of an open-ended interview question set. Boundary objects in the form of fish and their bio-robotic replications emerged as having played a central role in facilitating the negotiation of epistemological challenges, which were instantiated as differing experimental practices, theories, and concepts. Our analysis of the interview data pays particular attention to the role of boundary objects and epistemological challenges in shaping research and pedagogical practices and in bringing about disciplinary knowledge gains. We propose that interdisciplinary research processes operate viaboundary objectsto facilitateepistemicnegotiations that are leading todisciplinary transformations.The researchers’ reflections indicate that many of their approaches to research and education were fundamentally impacted through this collaboration and that their respective disciplines experienced knowledge gains that may not have been possible within a single-disciplinary framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including liberal studies in engineering, U.S. engineering education in early 1960s, and formation of engineers on technical skills and capabilities.

The education of Spanish engineers-civil servants became standardised since the 1830s, leaning on institutional precedents dating to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Henceforth, studies in a state-run special school constituted an important milestone and unifying element in the careers of these men. The education in special schools not only provided the future engineers with what was considered knowledge necessary for carrying out their professional duties, but it was also supposed to strengthen certain human characteristics desirable in elite civil servants in general, and corps engineers in particular. While some of these elements were introduced with more or less explicit intention to obtain specific results, others seem to have been developed as products of institutional dynamics or were combination of both. One way or another, the contents of engineers’ education, the criteria and methods of selection and evaluation, explicit and unspoken rules of students’ life, all these created very exceptional settings that shaped the young men into a unique profile. I examine how the different mechanisms of selection, evaluation and discipline and other elements of the school life in engineering schools besides the curricula, shaped the young men who studied there into a specific figure of Spanish state engineer, an elite man with a strong corporate (as in “corps”) identity, individual and collective self-confidence and a sense of entitlement to make decisions on behalf of the Nation. The conclusions discuss the exceptional position of Spanish corps engineers within nineteenth-century Spanish governing elites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers information on the workshop "Engineers and environment: achieving technological transitions" that took place in Trondheim, Norway during June 6-7, 2013. The workshop aimed at discussing engineers and their capacity for dealing with issues of sustainability. It was started by Professor Gary Downey who reviewed engineering studies.

In this essay, I examine ‘Education Abroad’– the large-scale migration of engineering students from India to the USA for seeking graduate education. I argue that Education Abroad in contemporary India is articulated at the intersection of multiple factors at different scales. These include imaginations of successful careers and lifestyles as well as frustrations with state-sponsored higher education in India – factors which, in turn, are themselves located within particular histories of (post)colonialism, developmentalism, and more recently, neoliberalism. Drawing on historical analysis and ethnographic research conducted among engineering students in Mumbai, India, and various parts of the USA, I trace ways in which Indian engineers make sense of and navigate through the intersections of these various historical and contemporary currents and the particular shape of Education Abroad that emerges as a result. Moreover, I suggest, in pursuing Education Abroad, these engineers inadvertently undermine the very systems of higher education of which they are legacy beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standards and regulations can play a central role in policies to achieve environmentally sound and energy-efficient buildings. This paper sets out to explore how consulting engineers relate to standards designed to impose sustainability in the construction of new buildings and in waste management. The paper addresses four cases of engineering practices. The first case describes practical skills and tools involved in what the engineers considered as ‘normal’ practices when performing energy calculations in the development of new buildings. The second and third cases deal with energy in new buildings as well, but address practices that supported or enabled the engineers to go beyond minimum standards. Case four explores a heat production project and more specifically, how the engineer deals with solving a problem related to calculating energy substitution. Together, the cases represent situations with quite different degrees of uncertainty as to how to relate to standards, from relative certainty represented in the first case to relative uncertainty in the last case. We shall look closer at the practices such situations entail and how they constitute different types of consulting engineering practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systems engineering is unique in being characterised by its methods rather than its artefacts. Consequently, the scope of systems engineering is difficult to define. While some systems engineers contend that systems engineering is capable of addressing socio-technical problems, including climate change and terrorism, others argue that it is strictly a technical field. The paper presents the results of a discourse analysis of systems engineering textbooks, journal articles, and a qualitative questionnaire administered within the International Council on Systems Engineering United Kingdom Chapter and University College London Centre for Systems Engineering. The analysis finds three parallel accounts of systems engineering in the sampled community. These representations are of systems engineering as something new, as good engineering, and as a meta-methodology. The three distinct discourses of systems engineering diverge on its concept, origin, scope, role, training, epistemological positions, and worldview. The paper shows that claims for and against the wider applicability of systems engineering techniques to complex socio-technical problems not only chart alternative courses for the future of the field but are also grounded in particular constructions of its origins, practices and worldview. While this brings circumspection to the recent rise to prominence of systems engineering within broader engineering discussion and debate, it also provides an opportunity for reflexivity within the field as it responds to demands for integrated solutions to complex socio-technical problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate how empathy and care look within an engineering context from the perspective of (1) existing literature (2) engineering faculty and (3) practicing engineers. The project employed three separate, but interrelated studies, including a summative content analysis of the existing literature, a consensual qualitative research analysis of small group interviews with the engineering faculty, and a consensual qualitative research analysis of written responses from practicing engineers to an open-ended question about empathy and care. Thematic analyses of all three studies demonstrated that although empathy and care appear to have a place within engineering and engineering education – particularly given the current trends in engineering towards sustainability, team-oriented design work, and the renaissance engineer of tomorrow – it appears that conversations and awareness of these two constructs may not often be explicitly stated within the literature or frequently addressed by academic and professional engineers. Results from this study help define the role, benefits, and challenges of framing empathy and care within the engineering field. Our analysis and interpretation regarding how these findings parallel and depart from the existing conceptualizations of empathy and care is specified, and implications for engineers and the practice of engineering in general are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As engineers of the Baby Boom generation retire from their career posts, novice engineers are entering the workplace. Workforce transformation and loss of strategic corporate knowledge underscore the need to generate understanding regarding engineering norms aiding or impeding knowledge transfer. While research exists regarding how Millennials learn, utilize technology for learning, and engage in social learning, no research exists utilizing generational categories as a means for analyzing behaviors that might support knowledge transfer .Using quantitative action research, this exploratory study investigates themes of engineering culture, communication, and generational norms. It begins by soliciting viewpoints of Baby Boom and Millennial engineers, comparing each generations’ communication preferences. Findings suggest that while communication differences do exist between the two engineering generations, similarities also abound. This paper discusses how revealing understanding and leveraging the generational communication similarities can be one means for fostering knowledge sharing within the culture of practicing engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blogs offer a space where engineers can engage with public audiences about engineering topics, challenging and surpassing a deficit model of science communication. Communication that is adapted for a broad audience, discusses topics that are socially relevant, and facilitates participation and dialogue is more likely to be engaging. We examined 14 top engineering blogs to see how engineers present themselves and how they communicate with the public. A qualitative content analysis of the communication, with an eye toward professional identity management, uncovered common themes associated with identity and self-presentation, leading to better understanding of how this unique communication genre serves to reinforce, question, and/or challenge popular representations of engineering identities and ideologies. Our analysis shows that despite the potential of blogs to facilitate engagement, engineers' reliance on an engineering style of communication may fail to engage public readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineers play an important role in communicating technology and its socioeconomic implications. In this paper, based on research into the recent history of wind power technology in Denmark and in Germany, we will investigate the communication efforts of engineers and its role in the success and failure of new wind power technology. We argue that effective communication by engineers and technicians was a crucial component for the rapid success of Danish wind power technology, while a lack of communication contributed to early failures in Germany. As part of their efforts in developing and promoting wind power technology, Danish engineers not only built informal and professional networks of communication in which knowledge and objects could be shared, but also acted as public spokespersons for wind power interests. The case of wind power technology shows that engineering communication comprised different forms, modes, and tasks of communication involving different types of actors and serving different needs and scopes. Engineering communication is not a simple tool at hand, but requires favorable social conditions and adequate institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italy in the eighteenth century was a constellation of states, each with its own particular characteristics. Italian engineers and architects, like those in the rest of Europe, defined their competencies by progressively differentiating their roles, thanks as well to a long period of peace between 1748 and the French revolution that Italy enjoyed. Their professional profiles depended on the various forms of recruitment, from theoretical education to practical training provided by the state or the corporations, which brings us to the history of universities, academies andthe creation of pedagogical institutions, both in the military and in the civilian sphere. If in Europe, and above all in England and in France, the process of differentiation between the two professional figures at the end of the 1700s appeared to be advanced, professional roles in Italy were conditioned either by the hegemonic presence of the central administration and of the local aristocracy or by the land and commercial middle classes. It was not until the Napoleonic age that we find a clear notion of the separation and identification of the two roles, along with a clear-cut intention to use uniform methods of recruitment based on competence and merit. Although the results were not the same everywhere, the basis was laid for new and more informed ways to practice the professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much work remains to be done on the role of engineers in Europe in the eighteenth century and we do not, in this short introductory survey, claim to offer an exhaustive historical perspective. Instead, we try to provide a framework within which to capture, by means of examples, the main lines of development. At this stage, it is not possible to cover all the national cases, nor even to provide a fully comparative analysis of those studies that have been undertaken. The aim is more modest: to suggest some hypotheses based on individual research and wide reading. For its initial results and a large bibliography on the question: Vérin and Gouzévitch, Sobre la Institucion y el Desarrollo de la Ingeneria, 2005, 115–64.  The century of European enlightenment (1697–1815), characterized by exchanges between scientists and academies, is also that of economic rivalry, technical competition, political conflict, and war. All these factors combine to produce in Europe a new practice of engineering in the midst of transformation. Yet, depending upon the country, we can observe significant differences in the strategies of knowledge appropriation in order to promote the growth of technology, a great variety in the training of engineers as well as in the exercise of their profession, their social status, even their title of engineer. Some common points are: the importance of military engineering which profits from the attentions of governments, the very progressive introduction of sciences in the practice of engineers, and the creation of special schools. But, once again, depending upon the country, these schools are grafted onto particular traditional teachings. Accordingly we propose a typology of the country-specific training and education of engineers in eighteenth century Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the history of the engineer in Great Britain at a time when the transformation in the infrastructure of the country being brought about by the Industrial Revolution turned the practice of engineering from a trade into a profession. In pursuing the theme of technology transfer, it also sheds light on the trans-national context in which the early engineers acquired their experience and conducted their business. This article draws on research into the Archives of Soho (the Boulton & Watt steam engine partnership) and the technological travel literature of the ‘industrial enlightenment’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Luigi Blanco and colleague on engineering profession in Italy and another by Alfred Rieber and colleague on history of engineers and of engineering in the Russia.

This article examines the role that native engineers trained in a foreign country play in international technology transfer, a topic in which the human factor has often been assumed as 'tacit knowledge' by historians of technology. The discussion explores the case of Basque engineers who graduated from the University of Liege in Belgium between 1850 and 1914. I first show that the high number of these graduates was, to a large extent, the result of a specific educational strategy, and will analyze the underlying social and entrepreneurial reasons for this. Next, I follow the actual interactions that took place between foreign suppliers and client companies, revealing a complex process in which the engineer (from hereon linking agent) served as a bridge between two places. Drawing on specific historical episodes of the Basque iron and steel industry, I examine the roles played by these linking agents in each of the four phases I judge important in any technology transfer: decision, acquisition, innovation, and diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that the equipping of intermediary objects is a central concern of engineers and technicians. Through the process of equipping, new properties are conferred on the intermediary object and this contributes to the shaping of the design space and collective work. I follow in particular how equipping is used in practices of mediation, temporal set-up and framework outlining and how it creates spaces of exchange. The argument developed is based on ethnographic studies of engineering design activities in the manufacturing industry and in a design office in charge of developing a large instrument for the CERN cyclotron. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each engineering occupation is distinguished by the body of specific knowledge it has built up over time. Some scholars argue that the instrumentality of this historically established knowledge in the solution of everyday design problems renders formal education more important than experience. Other scholars counter that engineering work primarily demands practice-generated knowledge that individuals construct in the course of everyday activities. We address this argument by documenting the frequency with which engineers apply different types of knowledge, with different derivations. Adopting a behavioral perspective, we isolated 1072 episodes of knowledge use in our field observations of structural engineers. From these episodes, we constructed a 'knowledge profile' that indicated that two-thirds of the knowledge engineers employed was practice generated. The profile also revealed temporal patterns in the frequency with which the engineers used each knowledge type. Knowledge profiles like the one we constructed should help differentiate among engineering occupations, thereby serving as the foundation for conceptualizing occupations in a world of 'knowledge work'. In addition, knowledge profiles can help university engineering education programs better target and mirror the knowledge demands of the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from interviews and field observations, this article argues that engineering needs to be understood as a much broader human social performance than traditional narratives that focus just on design and technical problem-solving. The article proposes a model of practice based on observations from all the main engineering disciplines and diverse settings in Australia and South Asia. Observations presented in the article reveal that engineers not only relegate social aspects of their work to a peripheral status but also many critical technical aspects like design checking that are omitted from prevailing narratives. The article argues that the foundation of engineering practice is distributed expertise enacted through social interactions between people: engineering relies on harnessing the knowledge, expertise and skills carried by many people, much of it implicit and unwritten knowledge. Therefore social interactions lie at the core of engineering practice. The article argues for relocating engineering studies from the curricular margins to the core of engineering teaching and research and opens new ways to resolve contested issues in engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]