Reconceptualising engineering education: Creating spaces for outcomes and dialogical agape

Most of the current theoretical perspectives espousedby many South African engineering educators arecommensurate with some radical internationaldevelopments in the engineering realm. Thesedevelopments are aimed at getting students to think,or go beyond the information given with theintegrative skill of bringing knowledge, skills,understanding and experience together in problemsolving activities and environment, which providesstudents with the best kind of preparation forlifelong independent learning. The rationale of thispaper is determined by an understanding thatengineering education at most higher educationinstitutions in South Africa is dominated by theacquisition of content, that is, ``knowing-that'.Limited epistemological and pragmatic space are beingallowed for students to engage critically withengineering knowledge, as well as to apply suchknowledge skillfully. This idea of engineering education isincommensurate with a general principle that ought toshape any form of education whereby students ought toengage not to do ``this or that', but to learn how tothink, understand and imagine themselves.In the first part of the paper a critical reflectionon the literature aims to establish connectionsbetween an understanding of engineering education andpatterns of meaning which make the concept what it is.Secondly, it is argued that an eclectic approach toengineering education is necessary in order that bothfacts (``knowing-that') and skills (``knowing-how')acquisition and application become the rationale whichwould enhance and expand engineering teaching andlearning beyond its present reduction to factual,technical content. Finally, it is shown that an eclecticapproach to engineering education has its limitationsand needs to be supplemented by the notion ofdialogical agape (love) which allows space fortransformatory learning, respect for persons and``imaginative reconstructions' of learning that canmove beyond the boundaries of socially negotiatedoutcomes.