Anders Buch

This chapter synthesizes the anthology’s contributions to explore how the concept of Bildung becomes relevant as a response to evolving challenge perceptions in engineering education and practice. The authors of the various chapters rejuvenate the concept of Bildung in different ways, each shaped by their distinct perceptions of contemporary challenges. Drawing from diverse intellectual traditions, they highlight different aspects of the complex, situated sociotechnical challenges facing engineering today. This underscores that Bildung is a normative endeavor that can no longer assume a stable and independent environment. As Bildung enters the Anthropocene era, articulating its vision for engineering must involve an active reconfiguration of social norms and practices to foster good and just ways of life.

This chapter introduces the theme and the chapters of the anthology. Inspired by the role the concept of Bildung has come to play in science education the chapter first seeks to provide responses to two fundamental questions, namely (1) what is the purpose of engaging in research on Bildung generally, and (2) what is the purpose of introducing the concept of Bildung in engineering education and practice particularly. For that purpose authors from anglo-saxon, skandinavian, francophone, and Chinese cultures discuss the relevance and challenges of this venture. The second part of this chapter briefly presents each contribution in its own right.

Research on engineering education and practice indicates that engineers’ understanding of the “social” is underprioritized and discursively enacted as soft rather than hard technical disciplines. Despite the resounding accomplishments, due to democratic insufficiency engineering projects have often contributed to the cultural impoverishment of our lifeworld. Hence, a Bildung perspective is needed in engineering degree programs; a Bildung perspective taking its point of departure in the democratic, cultural, and human challenges of society. The discourse on Bildung has primarily taken place in relation to the pedagogical professions, whereas the engineering profession has often been overlooked. In this chapter, we make up for this by considering an understanding of Bildung that is suitable for engineering degree programs. The chapter brings forth the social and ethical responsibility embedded in engineering work in democratic societies and calls to mind John Dewey’s democratic understanding of ethics, politics, and education. The chapter projects how this understanding might offer an opportunity to reconstruct Bildung and rethink engineering professionalism and the very telos of engineering to contribute to the democratic and responsible resolutions of societal and technological challenges.

Using the concept of Bildung as a framework, which in late capitalism/postmodernity may be perceived to include critical knowledge, value consciousness, ethics, and social responsibility (including sustainability), this project aims to investigate the underlying aspirations, structures, and dynamics of change taking place in engineering education and practice through conversations between engineering, social sciences, and the humanities. Calling upon the spirit of philosophers on Bildung such as John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas and contemporaries, the focus of the present project is on broadening engineering education initiatives and practice that follow normative understandings of Bildung. This volume appeals to researchers and students working in philosophy, engineering, and education.

The long-lived and widely held political imagination surrounding innovation is that of a process by which new developments in science and technology are transformed into new business applications. As a result higher education and professions are eager to impose their expertises onto, and claim authority within, the domain of innovation. In recent decades, universities and other engineering institutions that are typically associated with technology development, or ‘technology push’, have expanded their research and teaching activities toward the business end of innovation – also known as the ‘demand’ or ‘pull’ side. The chapter investigates the new emergent trend in academic institution building where business or demand-oriented competencies are incorporated to engineering curricula. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of co-production and sociotechnical imaginaries developed by Sheila Jasanoff and others, we analyze how social scientists at the Technical University of Denmark, in response to new demands for autonomous economy within Danish universities, invented the ‘Design and Innovation’ engineering program. Despite its controversial curricular composition, Design and Innovation entailed a revised status for engineering that brought together: creativity; social awareness; and product innovation. The successful implementation of Design & Innovation can be seen as a result of its unique capacity to bring together emphasis on application with new ‘holistic’ visions for higher education. The chapter contributes to contemporary discussions of transformations within the university system and implies that we should look more closely at the interplay between engineering, business and the surrounding society, and how engineering and business are valued, in order to understand the meaning of the engineering-business nexus.

This book unpacks key concepts and methods relevant for a critical and reflective framing of futures in postdigital education. The compiled chapters explore concepts and methods that have pertinence for contemporary debates about the emergence of data-driven education and scrutinize implicit or explicit ethical and normative implications. The book provides in-depth critical reflections and perspectives to engage and analyze data-driven education as an educational and cultural phenomenon. It focuses on the value-laden and ethical aspects reflected in educational imaginaries (discourses and practices) regarding emerging data-driven sociotechnical practices in education. The book is the result of scholarly exchanges between disciplines at a symposium held at VIA University College in Denmark in May 2022.

Humanistic theory for more than the past 100 years is marked by extensive attention to practice and practices. Two prominent streams of thought sharing this focus are pragmatism and theories of practice. This volume brings together internationally prominent theorists to explore key dimensions of practice and practices on the background of parallels and points of contact between these two traditions. The contributors all are steeped in one or both of these streams and well-known for their work on practice. The collected essays explore three important themes: what practice and practices are, normativity, and transformation. The volume deepens understanding of these three practice themes while strengthening appreciation of the parallels between and complementariness of pragmatism and practice theory.

Scientific research is usually presented as the driver that provides progress and meaning to the academic ecosystem. Higher education on the other hand, is typically imagined as something that naturally follows scientific research. In the academic ecosystem, education often retains a more marginalized position than scientific research and in many of the predominant accounts of the academic ecosystem it is even neglected. As a result, higher education and teaching tends to be treated as duty work that retracts resources away from research. In response to such accounts the present article proposes an alternative perspective in which higher education can assume a proactive role that affects institutions’ research. The article presents a case that demonstrates how social scientists at the Technical University of Denmark, in response to new demands for autonomous economy within Danish universities, invented the controversial, yet successful, ‘Design and Innovation’ engineering program. Design and Innovation’s controversial curricular composition brought together: creativity, social awareness, and product innovation and heralded the salvation for the declining status of engineering in Danish higher education. The article contributes to contemporary discussions on transformations within the university system by illustrating educational development as a transformative practice whereby the value and purpose of scientific disciplines get rearticulated in conversation with contemporary understandings of social needs.