Cross disciplinary research in engineering and educational sciences.

A Swedish case study

M. Christie, F. Ferdos and Tom Adawi CKK, ITIT, Chalmers, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden (mich@chalmers.se) Volvo, Torslanda, 41878 Gothenburg, Sweden (fariba.ferdos@volvo.com) CKK, ITIT, Chalmers, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden (tom.adawi@ituniv.se)

Abstract In this position paper the authors argue the benefits and the pitfalls in carrying out cross disciplinary PhDs that combine studies in the Engineering sciences with pedagogical studies. The paper traces the history of such studies in Sweden and provides a specific case study to illustrate key aspects of their argument. In 2002 the third author defended his thesis, half of which was a conventional physics study and half a pedagogical analysis of aspects of physics education. In 2005 the second author successfully defended her thesis which also comprised two parts. The first part, defended at the licentiate level, consisted of research into InAS quantum dots for laser applications. The second part was an analytical, critical, reflective study of the pedagogical, gender and multicultural issues that confronted her as a woman migrant studying to be an engineer. Both theses began as conventional physics theses but for professional and personal reasons the candidates to focus on engineering education. They received assistance from pedagogical experts who in fact, if not on paper, became their main supervisors. The resultant PhDs caused a good deal of controversy. This was partly because they were unconventional and crossed the science/social science boundaries. In Ferdos case there was another element. The pedagogical part of her thesis included a critique of sexism within engineering education and was reported in the press. Her findings contributed to a reform of workplace practices, especially in the area of doctoral studies at Chalmers. Those who felt threatened by some of the findings sought to discredit the work by arguing that the thesis lacked rigor. The fact that both theses were hybrids assisted those who were opposed to the mixing of science and humanities at the doctoral level in an engineering university. Their opposition, and the assumptions underlying it, highlights the need for a more carefully structured engineering education research process, one that, hopefully, will open up a career path for engineers who are interested in improving engineering education by carrying out research into how engineers learn best. This paper offers some possible ways of solving problems that arise when new and innovative PhDs, such as mixed engineering and education PhDs are attempted.

Keywords: Engineering education research; cross disciplinary doctorates; learning to learn; supervision.

1. INTRODUCTION
Knowledge building is, arguably, the main mission of the universities. Such knowledge building includes improving and disseminating established knowledge, via courses and extension work, and building new knowledge, via original research. To do this as well as possible academics need to know how knowledge (including skills and attitudes) is built; how it gains scientific acceptance; and how it is best taught and learnt. Undergraduate education tends to be good at teaching established knowledge and skills within particular subjects and disciplines. It is not so good at requiring or encouraging students to develop their meta-cognitive skills. Even at the postgraduate stage, when one is expected to make an original contribution to ones field, it is rare that the means and methods of inquiry are themselves subjected to scrutiny. For example a great deal of new science follows in the wake of innovative tools and methods. The invention of the telescopes and microscope enabled new strands of science. Once established it was hard for scientists to imagine that stars could be seen by means of radio waves or that sub atomic particles detected by spectroscopy. In other words new tools and methods can rapidly become so established that it is hard to conceive of any other way of doing science. As a particular paradigm ossifies it gets harder to ask questions involving new perspectives, meanings, tools and processes [1].

-1-

We argue that at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level knowledge building would be improved if in addition to a focus on the object of study (the what) students were encouraged to think more generally about how they gained that knowledge. For example, is there an even better way of learning about a particular subject or discovering new knowledge within or across disciplines? Depending on the level of inquiry this type of metacognitive activity could range from small analytical critical exercises to more thorough studies about knowledge formation. The general idea is to weave together the what and the how of learning. Bowden and Marton (2000) suggest that studies of the learning process should be included within every field of knowledge. In their book The University of Learning they proposed the creation of doctoral studies that combine original research in the subject area with meta-cognitive studies that focus on how new knowledge is formed [2].

2. SWEDISH EXAMPLES OF CROSS DISCIPLINARY THESES

In Sweden, particularly in the area of Physics Education, there have been a number of hybrid doctorates. Uppsala University appears to lead the way with a small research group which, to quote their own website, is an integral part of the Department of Physics and Materials Science in the ngstrm Laboratory. The activities of the group are centred principally around Higher Education, and the interplays between scientific literacy, student learning and the form and content of university physics and related engineering curricula and teaching. Students have been interested in a range of topics. They include such things as social identity, disciplinary discourse, epistemology, meta-cognition, language, gender, visualization, simulation, culture and disparate worldviews in the hard sciences. Although Physics is the primary focus of the group it is interested more generally in the engineering students experiences of learning, teaching and the educational environment. Six licentiate theses have been presented to date plus two PhDs, namely Adawi (2002) and Domert (2006). Today there are three doctoral students. Of the two nearest to completion one is concentrating on language while the other is looking at gender in engineering education. Sweden, unlike Finland, does not have a group that focuses specifically on Engineering Education research but in addition to the Uppsala students four other theses have been completed in this area. They include three from Chalmers, namely Ingerman (2002), (Ferdos, 2005) and Malmberg (2008). All three have been supervised by staff from Chalmers Centre for Competence and Knowledge Building (CKK) or its predecessor (CPU). A sixth thesis, that looks at learning and computer science education has been completed by Anders Berglund (2007) at the Centrum fr Teknikutbildning i Studenternas Sammanhang (CeTUSS) within the Uppsala Department of Information Technology. This centre for technical education within a student context was originally funded by the former Swedish Council for Higher Education. A group of computer engineers concerned with improving engineering education created and continue to run CeTUSS, arguably Swedens first research and development centre for engineering education. This brief summary of cross disciplinary PhDs is not meant to be an exhaustive list. Depending on how one defines the this type of PhD it is possible that there are other PhDs that could fit this category. For example, Chalmers together with Gothenburg and Karlstad Universities has established a Hasselblad funded research school aimed at enhancing didactics in natural science subjects. The project is funded for 4 years and the bulk of the SEK 16 million grant pays for five doctoral students whose research focuses on raising the quality of didactics in courses dealing with molecular science in chemistry, physics and biology. The students have supervisors from their science specialty and from education. As well as its research program, this Graduate School runs workshops, seminars and training courses for school teachers. Another example is the recently formed Chalmers Learning Centre that intends to fund doctoral research into engineering education and, in particular, research to do with engineering and sustainable development. The common denominator in all of the examples given above is that the students have been enrolled in a technical as opposed to an education department. They usually have two supervisors, one from their engineering area and one from pedagogy. The topics and research direction is often didactical in nature. It could be argued that the completed work of Ferdos and the current work of Danielsson and Berge focus more on the socio-cultural setting in which engineering education takes place. Danielsson and Berge, for example, are investigating identity formation in relation to group and laboratory work in undergraduate Physics. Both these researchers use positioning theory. Danielsson is part of the Uppsala Physics Education Unit while Berge is supervised within the Applied Information Technology Department at Chalmers. Of the completed theses those produced by Adawi (2002), Ingerman (2002), Anders Berglund (2007) and Malmberg (2008) were more in line with Bowden and Martons proposal and tended to use phenomenography as a means to better understand how knowledge in physics, computer or electrical engineering is formed and disseminated. ke Ingermans thesis, for example, was entitled Exploring two facets of physics Coherent current transport in superconducting structures. Phenomenographic studies of sense-making in physics. Ferdos, on the other hand, used critical intrepretivism [3] as her main research method. The articles she published were rooted in critical theory [4] and the monograph she wrote to support them, was, for the most part, a form of narrative inquiry [5].

-2-

In this paper we use the second and third authors PhD studies to focus attention on the advantages and disadvantages of carrying out a thesis in engineering education research. Adawi began his postgraduate research career in Physics by focussing on string theory. He successfully defended his licentiate at Chalmers in 1997. Ferdos did research into InAS quantum dots and their potential for laser applications and also successfully defended her research at the Swedish licentiate level. The research results were successful but the educational process less so. Both Adawi and Ferdos felt that the environment in which they worked did not sufficiently encourage critical and analytical reflection on the how, when and why of knowledge formation. Both candidates had migrant backgrounds, a fact that one might imagine would be seen as a positive thing in a research group intent on gaining an international reputation. This did not appear to be the case. In fact both felt a lack of support from some senior academic leaders in the department. Ferdos felt that she was further marginalised by her gender. Both candidates became more and more interested in the conditions under which they carried out research. The question that began to loom large in their minds was What were the pedagogical, equity, ethical and multicultural issues that impinged on the formation of knowledge within engineering education? Following their licentiate both Adawi and Ferdos, with support from their supervisors, were able to pursue their interest in pedagogy. New co-supervisors were found at the pedagogical development centre at Chalmers and although they continued to be enrolled in the Physics department their work was almost completely supervised by educational experts. The switch from a quantitative to a qualitative research method was not easy. In Adawis case it took another five years to complete the PhD part time. When funding ran out he was fortunate to be financed by the Uppsala centre mentioned above where he eventually defended his thesis. In the case of Ferdos the first author agreed to take on supervision duties and although she still had co-supervisors at MC2, as her department was called, she focussed her attention on the question of educational context in engineering education. She used her own experiences as a student in electrical engineering in both Iran and Sweden and as a postgraduate student in Photonics to throw more light on aspects of learning and researching within engineering science. One could say that in both cases the candidates made the switch for a combination of personal reasons, including dissatisfaction with the working environment they had experienced, and a growing professional interest in engineering education. An important element was their awareness of a multicultural, multinational world that had begun to shrink as the impact of information communication technology created what is, today, referred to as the global village.

3. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES WITH CROSS DISCIPLINARY THESES

Some of the fastest growing areas of research today occur on the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Biochemistry, bio-medicine, bio-physics are just some examples. Many universities, concerned about enrolments, make sure that they offer courses with a cross disciplinary flavour and this trend can be seen at the doctoral level as well. And yet, very rarely do we see courses and PhDs that cross the natural and social science divide. Global changes caused by technological developments and the necessity for economic and international competitiveness have made it crucial to develop a more global perspective [6]. Seeing the world as a unified series of systems is essential today. Despite this most engineering PhDs focus on the micro rather than the macro level. In his poem The Rock T.S. Eliot asks Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? When engineering scientists discover new knowledge that enables the construction of giant dams, that knowledge does not always lead to wise decisions. The human and environmental disasters that have followed the erection of massive dams on the Snowy, Nile and Yangste rivers might have been averted if wisdom, based on critical, analytical reflection, had been part of the knowledge building process. Gaining acceptance for a PhD process that seasons science with meta-cognitive critique would be a small but helpful antidote to science that can have unwise consequences. This requires a shift in perspective and as Jack Mezirow points out certain habits of the mind are hard to shift. We are often unaware of the cultural blinkers that we wear [7]. Undertaking a PhD that straddles the sciences and humanities can help one remove those blinkers. In both the theses mentioned above, but especially in the Ferdos study, a major focus has been to question assumptions underlying engineering education. Ferdos was forced to flee Iran just as she was finishing her electrical engineering degree there and required to do that degree over again in Sweden because she was not granted recognition of prior learning for her earlier studies. Comparing engineering education in Iran and Sweden in a critical and analytical manner helped her question things that she had taken for granted. For example, she had believed that sexism was endemic in Iran but not in Swedish society. During her undergraduate and licentiate education in Sweden she concluded that this was not the case. She celebrated that fact that certain structural inequalities were absent in Sweden, a country that has around 40% female parliamentarians. But she also noticed that the political correctness that was common in debates on gender issues masked the fact that sexism did occur in Swedish society and in particular in her engineering education. The fact that it was less obvious than in Iran actually made it much harder for her to deal with it personally [8].Two questionnaires

-3-

carried out at Chalmers (2002 and 2005) and the research she undertook in group work within Physics [9] indicated that she was not the only one who was affected by sexism within Chalmers. According to Eva Witkowska from Stockholms Institute for the Working Environment the 2002 study showed that 50% of female students experienced gender harassment and 30% sexual harassment. Some comments from the survey were It is hard to be a girl in such a male dominated school, but this is how the jobs are going to look like, so it is better to get used to it and Because the majority of students are men it is automatically a little like a locker room, but it doesn't need to be entirely negative. There are many advantages and disadvantages that can beset a hybrid science/social science PhD thesis [10]. Some of the disadvantages can be seen by looking more closely at the hybrid PhDs mentioned above. Ingermans thesis was conceived from the outset as a didactic study where he looked at the creation of new knowledge in physics. He had co-supervisors in both physics and in education. He chose an educational research method that was the speciality of the pedagogical expert concerned and this helped in the change over from quantitative to qualitative research. This is also true of students enrolled at the Uppsala Physics Education Unit. Although Ingerman and the Uppsala students had not completed earlier pedagogical studies they at least had supervision in qualitative research methods from the start of their candidature. In the case of Ferdos, Adawi and Malmberg it was much more difficult. They began researching in their specific scientific field but because of altered circumstances and interests switched half way to a pedagogically oriented study. This meant that they had to struggle to come up to speed with qualitative research methods. Most PhDs undertaking research in an education faculty already have an undergraduate and possibly a masters degree in pedagogy. All of those who have so far completed the type of cross disciplinary PhD that we refer to in this article have lacked this type of background. This is perhaps the largest problem for a relatively new and innovative type of PhD which already struggles for acceptance because of its cross disciplinary nature. In Adawis case it took five years from the licentiate to the PhD defence mainly because of the need to settle on a suitable methodology to manage and interpret the data he had collected. For Ferdos the lack of qualitative background was compounded by a decision, given time pressure, to adopt a rather radical methodology. The choice of narrative enquiry was one of the things that upset fellow scientists from her Physics department. It was bad enough to have a PhD that was half physics and half education. The fact that her monograph was written as a critical, analytical biography made it even harder to accept.

4. CONCLUSION
We have argued above that research carried out by trained engineers into aspects of engineering education has distinct advantages. An educational researcher interested in technical education but with no background in the area can, of course, do excellent research. However it can be argued that someone who has actually studied the subjects which are the focus of their research will be in an even better position to make sense of how to improve learning in that area. The disadvantage, as we have seen above, is that the time spent learning technical subjects often precludes a good grounding in pedagogy and educational research methods. The dilemma is that a lack of undergraduate training in pedagogy and postgraduate training in qualitative educational research methods can undermine attempts to build a solid profile for engineering education research. At present, in Sweden, there is no cohesive strategy, no lobby group, no network and no recognisable structure for developing such a profile. Finland is slightly more advanced with a strong research school that has several PhDs. Aalborg in Denmark has also made a beginning with a UNESCO Professor in Engineering Education and a number of PhDs. The question is whether to continue begin building disparate national profiles or simply skip that step and look towards a European model. This paper has provided a Swedish case study that indicates that there are a number of groups that may not think of themselves, at the moment, as engineering education research groups but could with support and direction create a strong national engineering education research network. SEFIs working group on engineering education research is perfectly placed to provide that sort of direction. After an initial meeting at the 2008 SEFI conference the working group has since met and begun to plan a pan-European base for engineering education research. With a solid base to work from, three of the most troublesome issues facing engineering education research can be addressed. These are providing a fast track education in qualitative research methods for engineers interested in doing educational research; building credibility within and across the engineering and education disciplines; and developing a network of engineering education researchers dedicated to improving all aspects of engineering. References [1] T. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1962. [2]J. Bowden and F. Marton, in The University of learning: beyond quality and competence in higher education. London: Kogan, 2000.

-4-

[3] M. Crotty, in The Foundations of educational research: Meaning and Perspective in the research process. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998. [4] W. Carr and S. Kemmis, Becoming Critical. London: The Falmer Press, 1986. [5] N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, in Hand book of Qualitative Research. California: Sage Publications, 1994. [6] L. Samovar and R. Porter, Communication Between Cultures, 4th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth Thomson Learning, 2001. [7] J. Mezirow, Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991. [8] F. Ferdos, InAs quantum dots for laser applications and pedagogical, gender and multicultural issues in engineering education. PhD thesis, Chalmers University of Technology, 2005. [9] M. Christie Ferdos and F. Ferdos, Assessing group work projects in higher education: some pedagogical and ethical considerations in Christie, M. (Ed) Shifting paradigms in Engineering Education, C-SELT, Gothenburg, 2006. [10] M. Christie and T. Adawi, A model for the supervision of PhD students in Christie, M. (Ed) Shifting paradigms in Engineering Education, C-SELT, Gothenburg, 2006

-5-