Engineering Education Today: The Need for Basics or Specialization

The Engineering profession is as old as mankind itself. It evolved from the work of the mason, the blacksmith and the millwright; but the modem profession was shaped mainly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The profession itself and the professional bodies played vital roles in the development of the education and training of new engineers. They set standards for competence to practise, which the educational establishments followed by necessity. In a rapidly changing world and a swiftly evolving technology, ideal educational curricula are difficult to establish. Nevertheless, most educators support the thesis that the emphasis of the curriculum should be on the basic and engineering sciences and on humanities, in order to create open-minded engineers, capable of adapting to the new challenges of technology. Training in specialized topics should be left to industry (on-the-job training) and advanced courses. But some professionals do not agree with this, advancing the theory that the new engineer should be able to cope with current industrial problems. The current trends in engineering education appear to be; a broad educational approach in science and technology as well as in the humanities, together with an emphasis on computer applications in every engineering discipline, both for education and for design. More consideration should also be given to engineering design and applications throughout the whole curriculum. In those countries with well-developed technological infrastructures, it is better to keep the basic engineering degree (BSc) to 4 years and enhance the advanced level and specialization degrees (MSc, PhD, etc) to promote the technology appropriate to the country. In less developed countries with limited employment markets and without developed technology, over-specialization may lead to unemployment and an unjustified waste of money. Participation of the students in design and/or research projects should always be encouraged, A comparison between the European and the North American engineering educational systems shows that in Europe undergraduate education is stressed more, whereas in North America advanced courses are better developed. Some comments on the Greek engineering education system are also made.     

Older Women Training to Teach

The relationship of age to gender in training, education and the wider society has been largely neglected. This article starts by exploring the discourses of ageism and sexism which impact on older women. The article then considers the situation for one group of older women who are all preparing to become teachers. Drawing on the perspectives of 11 older women, this article illuminates some of the dilemmas which mature trainee teachers experience. The intention in this article is to ensure that age is included when the complexity of women's oppression and discrimination is analysed.     

Physical Dimensions of Counseling: Perspective for the Helping Professions

Fifteen graduate students in the helping professions registered in a course that teaches helpers to use physical fitness as a counseling medium. The enrolled graduate students were matched with controls in four relevant areas, and both groups were pretested on 7 physiological and 11 psychological variables. The experimental students were given a 10-week treatment of physical fitness training, counseling in health habits, a life-style of well-being, and instruction in how to deliver these kinds of treatments to clients. For eight weeks the students used the skills in working with real clients. The experimental and control groups were posttested on the same variables; and multivariate and univariate analyses revealed significantly positive changes made by the experimental group. This article reports implications for graduate programs in the helping professions.     

Written Versus Videotaped Precounseling Training of Clients for Counseling

The comparative effects of two types of precounseling training in facilitating client-counselor relationships and client self-exploration of internally and externally oriented clients were investigated. Treatments included viewing a videotaped, simulated, initial counseling session depicting desirable client and counselor behavior and the reading of a document that matched the content of the videotape. Sixty college undergraduates, who presented themselves as first-time counselees, were randomly assigned to one of the two treatments and classified as internally or externally oriented. Both internally and externally oriented clients who experienced videotaped precounseling training reported a significantly higher level of client-counselor relationship than internally and externally oriented clients who experienced written precounseling training. No significant differences were found for level of self-exploration according to either type of precounseling training or locus of control orientation.     

VALIDITY OF THE SAT FOR BLACKS AND WHITES IN THIRTEEN INTEGRATED INSTITUTIONS

Differential prediction for black and white students was empirically investigated at 13 institutions by comparison of regression planes. Particular attention was given to the possibility that prediction procedures that are appropriate for white (majority) students would underpredict the performance of black (minority) students. The data tend to support, among others, the following generalizations: (a) a single regression plane cannot be used to predict freshman GPA for both blacks and whites in 10 of the 13 institutions studied; nevertheless, (b) if prediction of GPA from SAT scores is based upon prediction equations suitable for majority students, then black students, as a group, are predicted to do about as well as (or better than) they actually do; but (c) the multiple regression (SAT-V, M) prediction for blacks in 12 of the 13 institutions was lower in magnitude than for whites and was nonsignificant in 6 of the situations studied.     

Using Action Research to Enhance Teaching and Learning at the University of Technology,Jamaica

As part of its quality assurance systems, the University of Technology, Jamaica initiated a project aimed at exploring how action research could be used as a vehicle for enhancing the quality of the teaching/learning process. Following a series of orientation sessions and the development of a handbook for project teams, five action research projects were undertaken in the second semester of the academic year 2001-2002. The projects focused on using a student-centred approach in traditionally teacher-centred courses. At the end of the project cycle, results indicated that students became more independent learners and instructors had learned much about student-centred classroom strategies.