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Teaching engineering/engineeringteaching: interdisciplinarycollaboration and the construction ofacademic identitiesChristine Winberg aa Academic Staff Development, Fundani Centre for HigherEducation Development, Cape Peninsula University of Technology,Cape Town, South Africa

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To cite this article: Christine Winberg (2008): Teaching engineering/engineering teaching:interdisciplinary collaboration and the construction of academic identities, Teaching in HigherEducation, 13:3, 353-367

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Teaching engineering/engineering teaching: interdisciplinarycollaboration and the construction of academic identities

Christine Winberg*

Academic Staff Development, Fundani Centre for Higher Education Development,

Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa

Academics in higher education institutions are members of disciplinary commu-

nities by virtue of their qualifications and research activities, and as teachers of

particular disciplines (or professions) they are (or need to become) members of a

community of educational practitioners. In this paper, I analyse the ways in which

a small group of lecturers in a professional engineering discipline negotiated their

academic identities in the process of attaining a Masters degree in Engineering

Education. A series of narrative interviews was used to track shifts in the

lecturers’ identity trajectories during the Masters programme. The findings

indicate that academic identities, even within a single engineering discipline, are

flexible, multi-layered, and susceptible to different degrees of change. Despite

these differences, all participants experienced similar stages in the process of

shifting from engineering to engineering educator identities.

Keywords: engineering education; academic identities; professional development

Introduction: academic identity in a changing environment

There is a growing body of research that attempts to understand identity formation

and change among academic staff (Becher and Trowler 2001; Donald 1995; Geisler

1994; Harris 2005; Henkel 2000; Kember 1997; Neumann 2001; Taylor 1999;

Trigwell et al. 2005; Trowler and Cooper 2002; Trowler and Knight 2000). This

interest is partly due to the changing contexts in which universities find themselves:

the number of students enrolled in higher education institutions has increased (Scott

1995), there is more diversity among student populations worldwide (McNay 2005),

the nature and function of higher education institutions have changed (Barnett

2005), and there is a greater variety of roles played by higher education practitioners

(Harris 2005; Henkel 2000; Trowler 2001).

In South African universities, after a decade of democracy, there are significant

demographic changes to student populations. In particular there has been an

increase in the enrolment of black students many of whom, as a direct consequence

of the policies of the past, are under-prepared for higher education (Kallaway 1985;

Soudien, Kallaway, and Breire 2006). In addition, there have been mergers and

incorporations, changes to governance structures, new funding formulae, new

policies and new legislation for higher education institutions � all of which have

impacted on the nature of academic work and identity in South African higher

education (Balintulo 2004; Sawyerr 2004).

*Email: winbergc@cput.ac.za

ISSN 1356-2517 print/ISSN 1470-1294 online

# 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13562510802045394

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Teaching in Higher Education

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A theoretical framework for processes of academic identity change

Essentialist and individualist theories of identity have long been superseded by

theories centred on the social construction of identity (Castells 1997; Giddens 1991);

earlier understandings of the identity as static and stable have therefore been

supplanted by new understandings of the identity as flexible and open to change.

The construction of academic identities is particularly complex, comprising multiple

layers of disciplinary, departmental and institutional cultures, locations, missions,

colleagues, students, artefacts and traditions (Becher and Trowler 2001). Academic

identities are constructed both by academics themselves, and by their different

(disciplinary, professional, student) ‘publics’ (Taylor 1999). In this regard, higher

education can be thought of as a ‘community of communities’ (Brown and Duguid

1991, 53), which is both subject to shared systems of rules that constrain individual

inclinations and capacities, and open to the shaping of new meanings and new

practices.Within this community of communities, special interest groups, project groups,

and various other work groups can form, sub-cultures can develop, and academic

identities can develop and change. How these identity changes occur, and what

enables and constrains them, is less well understood. This is the point of the

theoretical framework, which addresses processes of identity formation, adaptation,

and protection.

Naturalised practices

Disciplinary communities are identified through particular forms of knowledge

production, related values and beliefs, territorial disputes (Becher and Trowler 2001),

and teaching practices (Neumann 2001; Neumann, Parry, and Becher 2002).

Identities are shaped in, and reinforced by, these strong and stable disciplinary

communities and the social practices generated within them (Castells 1997).

The act of teaching involves more than cognitive processes; it involves the whole

person: the identity (Trowler and Cooper 2002). Teaching is a social practice that is

bound up with disciplinary communities, social groups, situations, and contexts. In

higher education, the classroom is a site of identity work, both for academics and

their students (Taylor 1999). A teaching identity will be evident in the way in which a

lecturer plans a learning task, facilitates a learning activity, designs assessments, or

discusses related issues. Such tasks will be strongly influenced by other identities

(disciplinary, institutional, professional) and the introduction of an educational

innovation will necessitate identity work (Trowler and Knight 2000).

The concept of ‘difference’, or what Czarniawska (2002) prefers to call ‘alterity’,

and how it is attributed (‘they are different and therefore not us’), incorporated

(‘they are actually very much like us’) or affirmed (‘we are different’), has

significance for identity formation. All people, languages, and cultures distinguish

between self and other (Castells 1997). To exist is to differ. To exist academically is to

differ from other academic cultures (Bourdieu 2004). Identification with a

disciplinary community can be weak or strong, and alterity too can incorporate

degrees of difference (Czarniawska 2002). In this regard, it is helpful to think of

identity and alterity as positions on an inclusion�exclusion continuum.

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Academics are not necessarily attentive to the construction of their identities

(Knight and Trowler 2001), or how they have attributed or incorporated difference.

Such inattentiveness could result from what Fairclough (1995) calls the ‘naturalisa-

tion of ideology’, a process by which the values and choices involved in particular

formulations ‘disappear’ through habit or familiarity. For Castells (1997) the social

construction of identity ‘always takes place in a context marked by power

relationships’; dominant institutions develop ‘legitimising identities’, through which

they ‘extend and rationalise their domination’ (7�8). It might, therefore, work againstthe interests of lecturers in a particular discipline to ‘notice’ the practices of identity

formation, either because they are in no position to change them, or because they

benefit from ‘legitimising identities’ and have no wish to expose or alter the power

imbalances which these practices engender and maintain.

‘Rocks in the stream’

Giddens (1991) describes identity as a ‘reflexively organised project’, orchestrated

primarily by the individual through multiple choices that are ‘filtered through

abstract systems’ (5). Identities are flexible and open to change, but conditions for

reflexivity are necessary. Abstract systems and their naturalised practices can remain

hidden while there are no ‘disturbances’ to their operation. The entry of newcomers

(particularly critical newcomers) into an apparently stable and ‘naturalised’

community of practice can create disruptions and disturbances. Under suchconditions, that which was obscure can become revealed, like rocks in a stream

made visible when the normal flow of water is diverted (Knight and Trowler 2001,

57). Under such awareness conditions, changes to the identity trajectory are made

possible. Changing the identity involves work: identity change is ‘shaped by efforts �both individual and collective � to create a coherence through time that threads

together successive forms of participation in the definition of a person’ (Wenger

1998, 158).

Ventriloquation

Postmodernist theorists find the notion of a stable and coherent identity to be an

illusion, constructed out of an individual’s ‘narrative of the self’ (Hall 1992).

Narratives of the self change incrementally, by modelling alternatives. Bakhtin’s

(1981) concept of ‘ventriloquation’ (which involves trying out different ‘voices’ orpositions) provides an insight into the process of how narratives of the self might

change. Narratives in a process of change will ventriloquate alternative roles, values,

and possibilities. If, for example, the protection of engineering standards is the

dominant narrative of an engineering lecturer’s professional identity, then the

narrative of student-centred learning must be ventriloquated in various forms and

guises, before it can be incorporated into an ongoing narrative of the self. This

strategy will allow engineers to ‘sample’ the resources, repertoires and strategies of

active learning, without necessarily ‘buying into’ constructivist theories of learning.

As active learning strategies are practised, ventriloquation can develop into a

revision of the identity narrative. Repeated interactions will reinforce the repertoires

that are drawn upon, and a ‘trading zone’ emerges, which enables productive

interaction in further cases.

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The ‘trading zone’

Galison’s (1997) metaphor of the ‘trading zone’ provides further insights into

identity change in academic settings. Trading zones are multi-vocal sites in which

transactions can be conducted because a ‘pidgin’ has emerged through which the

necessary translations can be conducted. A Masters programme in Engineering

Education can be seen as an interdisciplinary collaboration between, for example, the

engineering disciplines and higher education studies. In the case of such collabora-

tion, the trading zone might consist of interactions between engineers and educators,

with the objects of trade traditional and new approaches to teaching and learning.For both groups the interchange would involve intellectual goods. The engineers

might, for example, be prepared to concede partial realignment of their teaching and

learning practices, in exchange for improved student results (or the award of a

Masters degree in Engineering Education). In the transactions between engineers

and educators, such ‘trade-offs’ can mediate different views and negotiate differing

agendas. Trading, as Galison points out, does not require equivalence in meanings

but rather translation and subsequent partial sharing of meanings.

A methodology for researching identity change

The focus of this paper is how engineers’ academic identities are constructed and

change as they acquire knowledge and skills in teaching and learning in highereducation. The study made use of a Masters programme in Engineering Education, a

vehicle for the research activities and a source of data. The study does not offer an

evaluation of the Masters programme; the relationship between the research project

and the Masters programme is more fully explained in the next section.

Research design

The research design comprised a series of narrative interviews with engineers

enrolled in a Masters programme in Engineering Education. There have been many

initiatives to enhance teaching and learning in the engineering disciplines on South

African campuses (Case and Jawitz 2003). The Masters programme referred to in

this study was one such initiative that focused on university of technology lecturers

who, unlike their counterparts in traditional universities, tend not to hold higher

degrees, or conduct research, but rather do most of their teaching at the

undergraduate level. The intention of the Masters programme was to provideengineering lecturers with an interdisciplinary degree, which would qualify them as

higher education practitioners within different engineering disciplines. The Masters

programme consisted of coursework and a dissertation. I taught the ‘Teaching,

Learning and Assessment’ coursework component, and am the ‘facilitator’ referred

to in this paper.

This paper is part of a larger study on identity change in interdisciplinary

contexts, and focuses on four candidates who were enrolled in the Masters

programme. The research participants, ‘Nothemba’, ‘Jean’, ‘Ashraf’ and ‘Ben’ (allpseudonyms), were located in a single engineering department. They were selected

out of the broader study as having the potential to form a departmentally based work

group. Knight and Trowler suggest that such work groups represent innovation in

academic settings, and are ‘sites of cultural ‘‘hammering’’, the powerhouses of

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university life; places where culture is both enacted and constructed and where

personal identity coalesces and is shaped and reshaped’ (2001, 57). Members of such

groups are likely to develop what Castells calls a ‘project identity’ (1997, 10) in their

efforts to transform the departmental status quo through collective effort.

Data production

Narrative data production and narrative analysis are increasingly viable strategies for

investigating the construction of academic identities (Belcher and Connor 2001;

Casanave and Schecter 1997; Johnston 1997; Johnson and Golombek 2002). As

narratives enable researchers to explore academics’ knowledge base from the

perspectives of the participants, they are particularly appropriate to a study of

identity. Narratives can be collected at different stages of a project, and can reveal

changing versions of the self. For the current study, I drew on Polkinghorne’s (1988)

concept of narrative as ‘a scheme by means of which human beings give meaning to

their experience of temporality and personal actions’ (11) and Ochs and Capps’

(2001) notion of storytelling as ‘social exchanges in which interlocutors build

accounts of life events [as] a tool for collaboratively reflecting upon specific

situations and their place in the general scheme of life’ (2). This narrative-analytic

approach was used to explore how academic identities are shaped at the nexus of

local practices, and larger ideological influences.The main source data for this paper were obtained from pre-enrolment, mid-

programme and end-of-programme narrative interviews, as well as one focus group

interview. These interviews were conducted between January and October 2004. The

pre-enrolment interviews were intended to gain insights into the special circum-

stances of the participants. These initial interviews were conducted in the lecturers’

offices and lasted approximately one hour. The candidates described their academic

backgrounds, their entry into the university, previous work experiences, current

pedagogic practices, and explained why they had enrolled for the Masters

programme.

Two interviews with each of the four participants were conducted at various

stages in the ‘Teaching, Learning and Assessment’ module. These interviews

typically took place after classroom observations and focused on the particular

teaching event observed. I elicited narrative accounts of how the lecture had been

prepared, what the lecturer had felt about the class, and so on, in order to provide

insights into the participants’ evolving identities, rather than provoke defensive

responses.

End-of-programme interviews were held to elicit participants’ reflections on theirown process of change. A final focus group interview was held at the end of the

programme, which took the form of a ‘member check’ (Lincoln and Guba 1985) on a

first draft of the findings reported on in this paper.

Additional data mainly comprised documents produced to meet the requirements

of the Masters programme and classroom observations. For example, candidates

were required to prepare a portfolio of teaching plans, learning materials, and

student assessment tasks. Candidates were also required to provide an analysis of at

least one of the practical tasks included in the portfolio in order to contextualise and

critique the educational theory underpinning it. In my role as facilitator (not

researcher) I provided feedback on the candidates’ work. Additional data were thus

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obtained from candidates’ teaching portfolios, formative feedback (usually inserted

into comment boxes on electronic versions of candidates’ work), observations of

teaching practice, and the final assessment reports, produced by the facilitator and

external examiner. The source data for this paper are shown in Table 1.

Data analysis

To code the verbal data, drawn from the transcripts of the individual and focus

group interviews and other textual material (teaching materials, assignments, e-mail

messages, comment boxes, etc.), I drew on Geisler’s (2003) system of identifyingcandidates’ own terms to build grounded conceptual categories, which were then

matched with the thematic strands emerging from the theoretical framework.

Ethical concerns

The participants gave me permission to use data from the interviews, observations oftheir teaching practice, as well as their teaching portfolios for my own research.

I undertook to protect the confidentiality of the participants by not naming them,

their discipline, their department, or the specific subjects that they teach. The

research project was not intended as an evaluation of the Masters programme, or of

the teaching practices of the participants. It was intended to track the process of

identity formation and change in a small group of engineering educators, but was not

always possible (largely because of my dual role as facilitator/researcher) to keep the

academic identity research project and the Engineering Education Mastersprogramme rigidly separate, and there were times that they became conflated.

Engineering standards, students’ needs and academic identities

All four engineering lecturers held professional qualifications, rather than research-

based higher degrees, as is often the case in engineering departments. The four

lecturers had varying degrees of disciplinary affiliation, different experiences of

tertiary education, and different institutional histories, but all identified strongly

with their professions. All of the lecturers in the group were (and some still are)

practitioners in their field.

Engineering programmes in South Africa are accredited by engineering councils.In higher education institutions these councils are represented on ‘advisory

committees’, whose permission is needed in order to make changes to existing

curricula. Advisory committees consist of members of the profession, as well as

academics. Issues close to the hearts of the advisory committee, such as professional

accreditation and student employability, appeared whenever departmental practices

were discussed:

Chris: When I look at this course outline . . . it seems overloaded . . .

Jean: I know their timetable is full . . . very heavy in fact . . . but this comes from the

AdCom [advisory committee] . . . if you are a professional [engineer] . . . then you can

dictate to the academics . . . tell them that the students need this skill or that skill . . .project management now is what they [the advisory committee] want to see . . . so they

can add more and more to the curriculum . . . and if you . . . as an academic . . . try to

raise concerns that there is too much for the students to cope with . . . you just get

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Table 1. Sources of data.

Participants (dates of interviews/document submission)

Sources of data Nothemba Jean Ashraf Ben

Pre-enrolment interviewa 26 January 2004 22 January 2004 19 January 2004 02 February 2004

Post-observation interview # 1a 25 March 2004 09 March 2004 23 February 2004 30 March 2004

Post-observation interview # 2a 10 May 2004 17 May 2004 04 May 2004 22 July 2004

Participants’ portfolios submittedb 16 August 2004 16 August 2004 11 August 2004 23 August 2004

End-of-programme interviewsa 13 September 2004 20 September 2004 10 September 2004 23 September 2004

Facilitator’s reportb Written 11 October 2004

Distributed to candidates 11 October 2004

Revised 15 October 2004

Post-programme focus group interviewa 15 October 2004

External examiner’s reportb Received 29 October 2004

aIndicates narrative data.bIndicates document.

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told . . . well then your students are . . . or they’ll be . . . unemployable . . . (Pre-enrolment

interview, 22 January 2004)

In the context of a technical university, engineering lecturers have a high

institutional status, which is derived from the engineering professions. It is therefore

difficult for them to insert educational concerns into curriculum planning meetings

(ironic as this may seem), if the focus of the advisory committee is the protection of

engineering standards, rather than the social and cognitive development of the

students. So while the lecturers were concerned that there was ‘too much for the

students to cope with’, their teacher identity was in conflict with their professional

identity: the one trying to accommodate students’ needs and the other conceptualis-

ing teaching as the protection of professional standards.

As engineers, the lecturers constructed themselves as knowledgeable and saw

their roles as imparting engineering knowledge to their students. The allegiance of

academics, as several researchers and theorists have pointed out, is primarily to their

disciplinary community and its traditional practices (Bourdieu 1988; Kember 1997).

The ‘lecture/demo’ is the traditional method of providing instruction to students

enrolled in undergraduate programmes in the engineering disciplines. This transmis-

sion-and-demonstration approach is supported by the architectural and adminis-

trative structures of the engineering faculty, which have evolved to accommodate

teaching practices conceived as lecture/demos. This format is also the only way that

lecturers are able to accommodate their content-heavy curricula.Lecturers interpreted the fact that many students were dropping out of the

programme, or having to repeat subjects, as a result of their department’s high

standards:

We have . . . around a 20% pass rate in the first year . . . on average students take four to

five years to complete what is really a three year programme . . . and that’s if they didn’t

drop out first . . . they can’t do the professional qualification until they’ve completed the

basic degree . . . so you’re looking at six or seven years before they can get out of here

and get a job. (Pre-enrolment interview with Ashraf, 19 January 2004)

The ‘low and slow throughput’ (described by Ben in his pre-enrolment interview,

2 February 2004) was partly a source of pride because this was sanctioned by the

advisory committee, but also a concern in the light of ‘huge pressure from the

institution to improve our pass rates’ (Ashraf, 19 January 2004). The poor

performance of students was the common reason why the four lecturers had enrolled

for the programme: Jean had enrolled for the course because she was concerned

about ‘not getting through to the students’ (22 January 2004), and Nothemba

wanted ‘to help students improve their results’ (26 January 2004). At this stage,

getting the students to pass their courses was largely understood in engineering,

rather than in educational, terms: the candidates had come to the Masters

programme to ‘fix the throughput problem’ (Ben, 2 February 2004).

Content vs. pedagogy: an academic identity crisis

The second round of interviews with the lecturers took place after the facilitator had

observed a lecture/demo given by each of the participants. The undergraduate

engineering programme covered many topics, and there was a densely packed weekly

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lecture timetable, which stretched from 08h25 to 13h00. Afternoons were taken up

with practicals, usually supervised by a senior student and laboratory technician.

The lecture/demos, and accompanying written materials, were dense with

information and delivered in an abstract style and authoritative tone. The lecturers

saw their primary responsibility to be the accuracy and currency of the content

offered, and not the way in which it was presented.

By the time of the first observations, the Masters programme had started and the

participants were attending a series of seminars for which they were required to read

theoretical texts, with the focus of the discussions on the relevance of pedagogies of

engagement to their own disciplines. The texts selected were accounts of teaching and

learning innovations in the engineering disciplines, and took a broadly constructivist

approach to student development. The seminar series was intended to be one of

awareness-raising about the participants’ teaching practices. One of the lecturers,

interviewed after a class, revealed his growing awareness of previously taken-for-

granted practices:

I’ve always felt confident about teaching [my subject] . . . it’s not a problem for me

to give a lecture . . . or to answer questions . . . but now I see . . . the teaching

approaches . . . that we’ve been reading about . . . ‘chalk and talk’ . . . that is my comfort

zone . . . (Ben, 30 March 2004)

As a group, the engineering lecturers began to think about how knowledge in

their discipline was organised, enacted, sustained, transmitted, and made materially

consequential through acts of teaching. Reflecting on how engineering knowledge,

with all its power and authority, might be mediated differently (and made more

accessible to under-prepared students) was the focus of the seminar discussions. In

Bernstein terms, the candidates had began to ‘recontextualise’ (Bernstein 1996, 54�81) engineering knowledge into engineering pedagogical knowledge. The acquisition

of pedagogical content knowledge, as Shulman (1986, 1987) points out, is a complex

process requiring the discipline-based teacher to contextualise, align, adapt, and,

ultimately, transform both content knowledge and pedagogical approach. It implies

an identify shift from engineer to engineering educator.

Candidates began to reconceptualise their understanding of the subjects they

taught, such as Physics, in the light of their growing understanding of educational

principles, and began to speak in terms of interdisciplinary ‘hybrids’, such as ‘Physics

Education’. For Bernstein (1996) identity is knowledge based; the acquisition of new

knowledge is likely to unsettle and shift the identity trajectory in ways that might be

beneficial or detrimental to the primary identity. Emerging teacher identities did not

immediately result in enhanced teaching. For the lecturers, the teaching (or

pedagogisation) of their discipline, previously assumed to be a straightforward

channel for the communication of engineering content knowledge, was revealed as

complex and, in the absence of a theoretical understanding, opaque. There was a

growing understanding that improving students’ throughput rate was an educational

matter, not an engineering problem.

Teaching practice and academic identities: indices of stasis and change

During the next set of interviews, participants’ narratives focused on the traditional

lecture/demo (which had become a site of contestation in the seminar series). From

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the seminar series, the lecturers had taken the (theoretical) position that the lecture/

demo created a passive environment, and was therefore not effective in promoting

student learning. However, they were not able to implement this understanding: the

lecturers claimed that if they did not use the lecture/demo format then disciplinary

integrity and coherence (in various forms and guises, but mainly in terms of the large

amount of course content) would be compromised. For the course facilitator (who

was not a disciplinary expert), it was difficult to know whether these claims were

actual or symbolic: ‘ . . . because that’s not the way it’s done in [discipline X]’

(Nothemba, 10 May 2004). The facilitator’s theoretical understanding of the

difficulties of what Bernstein calls the ‘pedagogising consequence’ (1996, 55) was

not helpful to lecturers who were battling to fit a vast amount of content knowledge

into a limited time, and who had not yet developed sufficient educational knowledge

to apply strategies of selection, pacing, sequencing, and so on.

As part of the requirement for the Masters programme, the lecturers were

prepared to try out different strategies, even if they were convinced that these would

not work. In the example below, taken from Nothemba’s teaching portfolio, the idea

that time for student discussion and reflection might be useful is ventriloquated in a

‘tag’ at the end of her lesson plan:

Lesson Purpose: This lesson is designed to develop students’ understanding of

[engineering principle 1] by solving [problem A] with [tool X].

Lesson Plan: 1) Recap on [tool X], the different types of [tools] and why they are needed.

2) Identify a few popular applications and highlight students’ exposure to these. 3)

Introduce X as a tool to manage [problem A]. 4) Identify the general format for

[solution to problem A using tool X]. 5) Demonstrate the use of [tool X]. 6) Identify and

demonstrate the [solution to problem A]. 7) Ask students to discuss in small groups.

(Nothemba’s teaching portfolio, 16 August 2004)

Ben similarly ventriloquates the idea of group work tasks for his students’ end-of-

course assignment:

This final case study allows you to work in groups to build and configure a complex

[device] using skills gained throughout the course based on the [subject X] academic

modules which include all the practical labs.

The case study scenario describes the project in general terms, and will explain why the

[device] is being built. Following the scenario, the project is broken into a number of

phases, each of which has a detailed list of requirements. It is important to read and

understand each requirement to make sure that the project is completed accurately. The

following [group] tasks are required to complete the case study . . . (Ben’s portfolio, 23

August 2004)

The facilitator’s comment on what Ben’s assessment task has to do with fair

assessment practices, but implies Ben’s incomplete understanding of the educator-as-

facilitator role:

It will be difficult for students to manage this task, as you have not given them

classroom based group activities, or trained them in group work, before this assignment

was set. Your assessment is therefore unfair to the students, even though I understand

that you are trying to include new ideas learned in the course in your assessment

exercise. (Facilitator’s feedback, 23 September 2004)

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A growing concern was that a short module on ‘Teaching, Learning and Assessment’

in a course work Masters could only ‘semi-skill’ (or worse still ‘de-skill’) content

lecturers. Developing pedagogical content knowledge entails mastery of two

specialised knowledge bases, which is not possible in the absence of a conceptual

understanding of issues in teaching and learning, issues that (for a number of

reasons) the lecturers struggled to engage with. What the lecturers wanted from the

course was a variety of teaching tools and strategies, or ‘tricks of the trade’ (Jean, 17

May 2004). Because of their difficulties with educational theory generally, and social

theories of learning in particular, the lecturers acquired only a superficial under-

standing of concepts, such as ‘group learning’ or ‘problem-based learning’.

Collaborative work, such as that between an engineer and educator, assumes that

expertise is shareable. The knowledge that constitutes expertise in a particular field

has been hard won. While the engineers called upon disciplinary coherence, the

facilitator similarly protected her own knowledge base and claimed her own expert

space:

There is a considerable amount of knowledge that the candidates have to acquire. The

base disciplines of education are psychology (developmental, behavioural, and

cognitive) and sociology (teaching and learning as cultural practices) � without some

knowledge of these disciplines it is hard for people to become competent lecturers � they

simply don’t know what they’re doing, or how to be more effective when doing things

differently. To build some knowledge in these areas is not easy, it means doing lots of

reading and having the time to reflect on your own practices in the light of educational

theory. The knowledge base for effective teaching cannot be built overnight � even if one

does not expect [the candidates] to be educational experts. (Facilitator’s Report, 15

October 2004)

Disciplinary ‘relevance’ became a site of tension for the various motives, perceptions

and goals of the engineering lectures. When the facilitator tried to regulate an

engineering lecturer into particular ways of knowing, the lecturer insisted that clarity

or coherence would be lost if they taught in that way. Lecturers had to find their

own, different pathways of explicit and implicit induction into the discipline of

education. The achievement of integrating new teaching and learning strategies with

relevant disciplinary modes of expression and material realities was not always

achieved (or achievable). The degree to which the engineers were socialised into

student-centred teaching practices was, necessarily, limited.

Teaching like an engineer: negotiating academic identities

Interdisciplinarity is inevitably contested. Galison (1997) likens interdisciplinary

collaboration to a ‘trading zone’ in which fruitful transactions are dependent on the

extent to which disciplinary partners are prepared to find common ground. There are

inevitable disciplinary constraints, even ‘non-negotiables’. The engineering lecturers

brought their engineering expertise to the task of educational enhancement, and the

work distribution shifted to accommodate the configuration of available expertise.

This resulted in more changes to the nature and direction of the Masters programme

than to the candidates’ practices, as this extract in which Ben analyses of one of his

own lectures demonstrates:

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The transmission of information has been derided as ‘chalk and talk’ by a number of

educational theorists. However, transmission-centred and content-oriented approaches

are necessary in disciplines with restricted knowledge and which have clearly defined

boundaries (Becher 1996), such as [discipline X]. In [discipline X] there is a need for

students to learn facts, and to master a particular body of knowledge. I believe that I can

transmit [discipline X] information most effectively using the lecture/demo format.

A good lecturer will include: a content overview, a map of the lecture’s concepts and

progress, have the demo set up and functioning, and hand out summary sheets at the

end. All these materials should be available on the intranet for students’ own study use.

These teaching aids can help me to get information across more effectively than putting

the students in small groups, which would . . . consume too much time relative to the

importance of the task. (Ben’s portfolio, 23 August 2004)

That which the facilitator offers (student-centred learning), might not be what the

disciplinary lecturer values (transmission of knowledge). The lecturer will then have

to adapt the offered object of trade to his or her own needs. In the context of

educational enhancement, engineering lecturers must make ‘local sense’ out of

student-centred approaches, which will have different meanings for the different

parties. Below is the facilitator’s comment on Ben’s paper:

Taylor (1997) claims that once discipline-based academics begin to engage with the

research literature on education, and use it to inform their thinking about teaching,

there is a strong likelihood that they will start to identify with a student-centred,

learning-oriented approach, irrespective of the discipline they teach . . . you have

described a very student-friendly lecture/demo. (Facilitator’s feedback, 23 September

2004)

Teaching practices that are strongly associated with disciplinary norms and values

are unlikely to undergo radical change, but traditional practices can be enhanced as

lecturers find ways to balance their engineering and educational identities.

Conclusion: teaching engineering/engineering teaching

The engineering lecturers’ identities were strongly associated with their engineering

knowledge, while their teaching knowledge and teaching identities were evolving.

The shifts that were noticeable in their teaching portfolios were: less emphasis on the

delivery of factual lecture/demos and more emphasis on tasks which prepared

students for dealing with the lecture/demo content, as well as tasks which enabled

students to practice and apply the knowledge contained in a lecture/demo and

related texts. Shifts that were noticeable in observations of classroom practice were

that lecturers felt more comfortable about not explaining everything and not always

being in control. Figure 1 shows these shifts along a continuum of engineering

content and pedagogical knowledge, with resultant implications for identity change.

The engineers came to the teaching and learning project as ‘experts’ in their

discipline (quadrant B); they came to the educational project with the tools and

means of engineering, and approached student learning as an engineering ‘problem’:

how to increase student ‘throughput’ without lowering engineering standards. They

were able to make an identity shift (or add another layer to their identities), and

began to reconceptualise themselves as engineering educators (quadrant C). (The

candidates did not shift fully into quadrant B, but they were moving in that

direction.) On a few occasions the lecturers assumed a ‘facilitator’ identity (quadrant

364 C. Winberg

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D), and deliberately held back information in the lecture/demo, enabling students

to make their own discoveries and learn from their mistakes in the follow-up

practical. These (incomplete) shifts away from the ‘expert engineer’ position could be

understood as attempts to enhance the traditional lecture/demo as a mode of

teaching.This paper has suggested ‘indicators’ for understanding the process of identity

formation and change for academics developing new (or enhancing old) teaching

and learning practices. In higher education, it is unlikely that ‘novice’ engineers

would be appointed (quadrant A). A starting point is likely to be an ‘expert’

position, which is indicative of a strong disciplinary identity and the use of the

‘traditional’ pedagogies associated with the discipline (quadrant B). When such

practices are contested, previously tacit knowledge is brought to the surface. As new

educational approaches are introduced, a stage of ‘ventriloquation’ will be evident ina temporary acceptance, but incomplete understanding, of the new practices.

A ‘trading zone’ then develops, enabling disciplinary experts to exploit tensions and

contestations, and to make counter offers. Objects are traded, such as transmission-as-

naturalised-practice for transmission-as-enhanced-practice (quadrant C).

The development of pedagogical engineering knowledge is a long-term inter-

disciplinary project. Higher education studies and the engineering disciplines differ

fundamentally in many ways: how knowledge is produced, what kind of knowledge

is valued, as well as how one teaches or communicates this knowledge. In order towork successfully across their disciplinary boundaries, engineers and educators need

to find ways to identify, explore, and negotiate those differences.

Collaboration is likely to be strengthened when engineering and education

partners acknowledge the complexity of their different ways of knowing, and are

open to the potential for both generic and disciplinary-specific forms of teaching and

learning. Teaching in disciplinary relevant genres is a process of becoming socialised

into the activities, ideologies, meaning systems, power structures, and institutional

goals of sometimes oppositional endeavours. Academic identity, and its potential forstasis and change, is at the core of such endeavours.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Paul Trowler for his insightful comments on an

earlier version of this paper. He would also like to acknowledge the feedback from the two

anonymous reviewers, whose critical comments helped him to re-shape this paper.

Figure 1. Identity shifts in the process of acquiring pedagogical content knowledge.

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