Re: Engineering culture

Dewey Dykstra, Jr. (dykstrad who-is-at bsumail.idbsu.edu)
Thu, 19 Feb 1998 11:45:08 -0700

>
>Jan Nespor did a very interesting study, now I think out as a book, on the
>education of engineers in their student days. Much filled with ethnographic
>data and insight about their feelings as well as thinkings, the relations
>between their macho culture, the pressure of engineering schools, the
>problems they are assigned for homework, the competitiveness, etc. In short
>the contexts that shape the culture of their thinking and identities. It
>says a lot about the thinking, too. I believe he used physics students as a
>comparison group. The cite should be easy enough to find.
...
>
>I do so much like using scholarship to disrupt the process of brainwashing
>the next generation! rather than using it to find more effective ways to
>teach them to think like we say we do ... maybe that for me is the
>difference between the actual applications of anthropological and
>sociocultural perspectives vs. cognitive psychological ones in education
>and society in the last 30 years.
>
>JAY.

Jay:
The Nespor book was titled "Knowledge in Motion" on Falmer Press I believe
and the two groups were physics undergrads and management undergrads. A
very 'telling' insight into the experiences of the physics students, I can
say with some authority.

I agree on the issue of 'brainwashing' the next generation. Nespor's book
and other experiences in 'the profession' of physics and physics education
lead me to see science/physics education as more of a vocational filtering
and indoctrination process than an educative process. I've been gathering
notes to write up this view for a while and have given a couple of talks
about it. Guess it's time to commit it to a manuscript for publication.

Dewey

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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University dykstrad who-is-at bsumail.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper

"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and
are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external
world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld,
1938.
"Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct
of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence."
--E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958.
"Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in
There Are No Electrons, 1991.
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