July 2014

PE REPORT
Think Like an Engineer

Engineers in the UK are facing the same existential questions about the profession as engineers in the US: How do we better prepare engineers of the future? How do we build more interest in engineering as a career path? How do we attract more women to the profession?

In May, the Royal Academy of Engineering released a report that outlines how revamping the United Kingdom’s education system to embrace an engineering mindset is critical to increasing the engineering talent pool. The Academy’s approach is to determine how engineers think and act, and then teach young students how to be engineer-learners.

Royal Academy of Engineering researchers believe that if young people, and young children in particular, are exposed to styles of teaching and learning that are more closely related to the real world of engineering, they are more likely to view engineering as a subject worth studying and pursuing as a career. Current engineering education, the academy says, is not as prominent at the primary school levels, and teaching methods can give an impression of the field that is misleading and unattractive to students.

The report outlines the following six attributes of the “engineering habits of mind” that describe how engineers think and act:

1. Systems thinking—Seeing whole systems and parts and how they connect, pattern-sniffing, recognizing interdependencies, and synthesizing.
2. Adapting—Testing, analyzing, reflecting, rethinking, changing both in a physical sense and mentally.
3. Problem-finding—Clarifying needs, checking existing solutions, investigating contexts, and verifying.
4. Creative problem-solving—Applying techniques from different traditions, generating ideas and solutions with others, generous but rigorous critiquing, and seeing engineering as a team sport.
5. Visualizing—Being able to move from abstract to concrete, manipulating materials, mental rehearsal of physical space and of practical design solutions.
6. Improving—Relentlessly trying to make things better by experimenting, designing, sketching, guessing, conjecturing, thought-experimenting, and prototyping.

A better understanding of how engineers think could help teachers better design curricula and provide clues on how to more effectively present engineering as a career to young people, says the report. The researchers provided several key recommendations for engineering teachers, schools, employers, and the public, including the following:

• There should be a continuous conversation on “how engineers think” through various events, such as seminars, lectures, blogs, and films.
• There should be a dissemination of core messages within the engineering teaching and learning community and a development of signature engineering pedagogies that include project-based and problem-solving learning.
• A national center for engineering pedagogy should be established to bring together education experts with engineers and employers.
• A new national curriculum set to launch in September should provide a chance for leaders, particularly curriculum planners, to create more opportunities for engineering through new programs targeting computing, mathematics, science, and design and technology.
• Employers should engage in a conversation about the usefulness of focusing on the engineering mindset and encourage staff members to share their knowledge with schools, colleges, and universities.