Reflexivity and hegemony: Changing engineers

One of the basic tenets of reflexive practice is that one must learn to identify and question presuppositions (starting assumptions). But part of what we do as university teachers is to socialise our students to the norms of the discipline, whatever that may be. We have found this matter of learning and practicing what could be called hegemonic behaviours to be particularly salient for engineers, but suspect it is significant in all disciplines. We are interested in the extent to which reflexivity can be expected of neophytes and how and when to introduce it but we are also interested in the effects reflexive practice has on practitioners. It has become clear to us that the changing contexts that require a new kind of engineer, also require a new kind of engineering educator. Teachers, as well as students, must learn new skills.

In this paper we detail some preliminary studies into the culture of engineering which shaped our thinking in this matter, as well as the various strategies and devices we have used to achieve reflexivity in students. These have included journals, professional logs, and critical incident analyses. None of these are new techniques, but we argue that it is the practice of them by teachers and students in partnership that has the potential to bring about change. Along the way we draw a theoretical distinction between reflection and reflexivity, and we argue that only a truly reflexive practice that re-orients the practitioner towards self in context can produce the changes called for. Our research shows that reflective schemas that concentrate on the technique of technical and practical rumination, without attention to the reflecting self, tend to become "tick a box" exercises which are easily marginalised within an over full curriculum. The difficulties in achieving this kind of self reflection (reflexivity) within a discipline that sees itself as hard nosed and empirical are largely obvious. Giving reflexivity hegemonic standing in engineering will not be an easy task but its inclusion in a recent site based course in the field of mining (to be reported on elsewhere at this conference in more detail) is an encouraging sign and lets us propose some future initiatives towards changing engineers.