2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Visions of Engineers for the Future: A Comparison of American and Chinese Policy Discourses on Engineering Education Innovation

Presented at Governance, Diplomacy, and International Comparisons in Engineering Education

The US National Academy of Engineering reports The Engineer of 2020 and Educating the Engineer of 2020 marked an important shift in policy thinking regarding engineering education: the emphasis of engineering education leaders thence shifted from producing engineers based on existing socioeconomic demands to actively envisioning and shaping the roles and characteristics of engineers in the future. Writing in the year of 2020, when engineering education yet again faces looming paradigm shift driven in part by a global pandemic and major powers’ adjustment in attitudes and strategies to globalization, we attempt to reassess visions of “engineers for the future,” as reflected through policy discourses in the United States and China, two major players in global engineering education. For this purpose, we present a careful reading of recent policy documents published by the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Chinese Ministry of Education (MoE).

The NAE (2018) report Understanding the Educational and Career Pathways of Engineers resulted from a study commissioned by the Academy to “understand characteristics and career choices of engineering graduates, … as well as the characteristics of those with non-engineering degrees who are employed as engineers in the United States.” Authors of the report sought to sustain the supply of competent engineers in the US by investigating “the engineering education-to-workforce pathway.” Around the same time that the NAE study was conducted, engineering educators and policy makers in China were engaged in a series of conversations aimed at renewing China’s engineering education for the next thirty years. These conversations laid the groundwork for the Emerging Engineering Education (3E) initiative, announced officially by the MoE in 2017 and followed by waves of funded engineering education research and practice projects across the nation.

This paper examines and compares the visions of “engineers for the future” embodied in the NAE (2018) report and the 3E initiative (2017) in China. Our analysis of policy texts seeks to answer the following questions: What assessment of engineering education reality in the US and in China respectively motivated the NAE study and the 3E initiative? What visions of engineers and engineering education are advanced in the respective policy documents? Accordingly, what changes in engineering education are recommended for meeting the visions proposed by policy scholars in the US and China?

Answering these questions will help us engage critically in discourses about the future of engineers and engineering education from a transnational perspective. Perhaps through conversations involving the global community of engineering educators, we might aspire to a broader and more inclusive vision of global engineering education than NAE and MoE has each aspired to accomplish in its own national context.

Authors

Miss Yi Cao Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

CAO Yi is a new PhD student at the Dapartment of engineering education in Virginia Tech with the guidance of Dr. Jennifer Case. She is also a research associate at the International Center for Higher Education Innovation(ICHEI), a UNESCO Category 2 Center situated in Shenzhen, China, on the premise of the Southern University of Science and Technology.

With Yi's a bachelor degree of Standardization of Engineering and master of Higher education, she has been inspired to focus on International engineering education research. Her research interest broadly covers comparative education quality and engineering education innovation. Topics she is currently working on include General Curricula for students of Science and Technology(empirical case study), Standards of Engineering Education Accreditation(ABET), and International Collaboration of Scholars in Graduate Education.
Mr. Xiaoye Ma Tsinghua University
Dr. Jennifer M. Case Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Jennifer Case is Head and Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She holds an honorary position at the University of Cape Town. Her research on the student experience of learning, focusing mainly on science and engineerin
Prof. Brent K. Jesiek http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3056-5144 Purdue University at West Lafayette [biography]

Dr. Brent K. Jesiek is Professor in the Schools of Engineering Education and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University.
Dr. David B. Knight http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-2490 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

David Knight is a Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and also serves as Chief of Strategy in the College of Engineering and Special Assistant to the Provost. His research tends to be at the macro-scale, focused on a systems-level perspective of how engineering education can become more effective, efficient, and inclusive, and considers the intersection between policy and organizational contexts. Knight currently serves as the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering Education.
Dr. William "Bill" C. Oakes http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6183-045X Purdue University at West Lafayette [biography]

William (Bill) Oakes is the Assistant Dean for Experiential Learning, a 150th Anniversary Professor, Director of the EPICS Program, Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University, and a registered professional engineer. He is one of the founding faculty in the School of Engineering Education having courtesy appointments in Mechanical, Environmental and Ecological Engineering and Curriculum and Instruction. He was the first engineer to receive the U.S. Campus Compact Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service-Learning and a co-recipient of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering’s Bernard Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education. He is a fellow of NSPE and ASEE and elected to the ASEE Hall of Fame.
Dr. Marie C. Paretti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2202-6928 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Marie C. Paretti is a Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and a founding co-editor-in-chief of Studies in Engineering Education. She holds a B.S. in chemical engineering and an M.A. in English from Virginia Tech and Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is PI or co-PI on numerous NSF grants exploring communication, teamwork, design, professional identity, and inclusion in engineering. Drawing on theories of situated learning and identity development, her research explores examines the ways in which engineering education supports students’ professional development in a range of contexts, with a particular focus on the school to work transition.
Dr. Xiaofeng Tang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6279-9941 Tsinghua University [biography]

Xiaofeng Tang is Associate Professor in the Institute of Education at Tsinghua University. Prior to his current position, Dr. Tang worked as an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University. He did
Zheping Xie Tsinghua University
Prof. Haiyan Zhao

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