Abstract:

Numerous studies and reports by governments, professional bodies and the engineering sector have been written over the last few decades mainly centring around skills shortages amongst engineering graduates, the globalisation of the profession and its continuing difficulties in portraying a positive ‘image of engineering’.

The place of educating the engineering educator and a re-examination of the pedagogical approach has enjoyed more interest in recent years (Adams & Felder 2008, Grenfell & James 2004) and is the focus of new ideas as well as a re-examination of existing constructs.The authors argue that, despite some progress and a number of educational initiatives within the STEM programme, a more structured and creative approach is called for in respect of educating the engineering educators. We are currently researching this engineering education culture and the need for both student and academic, within this important sector, to upskill their professional development and experiences through a common enterprise model.

Park & Oliver (2008) provide a template for the development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) as a way of knowing amongst both educator and student. Transforming knowledge into knowledge-for-teaching is identified as one of three important research areas but has received insufficient attention. By using a ‘flipped classroom approach with an Enterprise Project across the Engineering faculty at the University of Huddersfield, is described and the results discussed which serve as best practice to developing a new pedagogical tool to ensure ‘the engineer’ continues to be an important and essential ingredient for future success.

Keywords:

Engineering Education, Pedagogy, Engineering, Engineering Educators.