A little online reply, before moving offline...
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> There was a very large study of engineering students in the USA a
> few years ago, based on the MBTI.
Richard Felder (who I believe is at North Caroline State) has been looking
into the effects of learning styles on engineering education for a while
now. He uses both his own instrument and the MTBI and has documented some
interesting findings with respect to the preferences of engineering
students.
The problem I run into when thinking about individuals such as Dr. Felder
(and other excellent researchers and teachers such as Phil Wankat, Richard
Buchannan, etc.) is that they seem to be embedded in institutional contexts
that would make it exceedingly difficult to work with them as a PhD student
working on educational issues. Based on the (limited set) of people I have
spoken to, academic departments (such as Chemical Engineering, from whence
the majority of "big name" engineering educators seem to come) aren't that
interested in granting PhDs where the focus is on education, not on the
speciality (such as chemical processes).
The "obvious" answer is that I should be looking at faculties of education,
not of engineering (or architecture, etc.) Unfortunately while there
appears to be a modicum of research into the peculiarities of educating
university-aged students, I have yet to find a faculty of education that is
investigating discipline-specific, university-level pedagogy. The issue of
supervision arises again, as faculty members in education are unlikely to
have discipline-specific skills in design, engineering, etc.
The next obvious step is to be jointly supervised by someone in engineering
with skills in discipline-specific pedagogy and by someone from education
with skills in emerging adult education. Crossing intra-disciplinary
boundaries is difficult; crossing inter-disciplinary boundaries between the
humanities and the applied sciences has appeared to be almost a Quixotic
quest. From what I can see, just getting my prospective supervisors to
talk would be an accomplishment.
A criteria that I have adopted, and may have to reconsider, is that I would
like to earn either a degree specifically in "XXX Education", or I would
like to earn a joint PhD in Education and Engineering/Design/etc. My
rationale for this criteria is that I will need the respect of both groups
if I am to succeed in the long term. I have already come across
circumstances where engineering professors belittle the suggestions of
education specialists as being "not engineering", while the education
specialists look at the education activities of engineering professors as
the misguided dabblings of rank amateurs. Given that I would like to
bridge this apparent gap, I currently feel that I need a degree that is
respected by both sides. I would be thrilled to have flaws in this
argument demonstrated.
Sorry about the long reply. I have spent enough time thinking on these
issues, that I'm wondering if I have created barriers or obstacles that don'
t actually exist. Accordingly I am sharing my logic in the hopes of having
it dashed to the ground :)
Thanks for your reply.
Jason Foster
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