A case of conceptualisation: using a grounded theory approach to further explore how professionals define engineering judgement for use in engineering education

ABSTRACT

Students are expected to have developed their engineering judgement throughout the course of their studies as part of their accreditation requirements (as stipulated by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology for example), and yet conceptually it is often ill-defined and therefore difficult to teach. This work was carried out in an attempt to better conceptualise engineering judgement for use in higher education. As such, semi-structured interviews were conducted with established members of academic staff who additionally had extensive industrial experience – who were asked to define engineering judgement and which aspects students ought to develop in their studies. A pragmatic grounded theory approach was used, based on the assumption that a theoretical idea/framework could be developed, enabling us to refer to previous literature and the emerging categories from our data set to help clarify engineering judgement. Several terms help define engineering judgement, including accumulated experience, fundamental theoretical knowledge, and imagination/intuition. Essential criteria for developing judgement includes students’ ability to identify and reduce complex problems, and embrace failure. A theoretical framework has been proposed accommodating a more enhanced definition and conceptualisation of engineering judgement which can be applied and adapted for use within engineering education for students’ ultimate benefit.

KEYWORDS:

• Engineering judgement
• conceptual framework
• grounded theory approach
• staff perspectives
• undergraduate higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Part of the response to this question and the succeeding one were analysed and published previously [Chadha and Hellgardt 2022].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deesha Chadha

Dr Deesha Chadha is a Senior Strategic Teaching Fellow. He is affiliated with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London.

Klaus Hellgardt

Klaus Hellgardt is a Professor of Catalysis. He is affiliated with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London.