Reconstructing engineering from practice

Using data from interviews and field observations, this article argues that engineering needs to be understood as a much broader human social performance than traditional narratives that focus just on design and technical problem-solving. The article proposes a model of practice based on observations from all the main engineering disciplines and diverse settings in Australia and South Asia. Observations presented in the article reveal that engineers not only relegate social aspects of their work to a peripheral status but also many critical technical aspects like design checking that are omitted from prevailing narratives. The article argues that the foundation of engineering practice is distributed expertise enacted through social interactions between people: engineering relies on harnessing the knowledge, expertise and skills carried by many people, much of it implicit and unwritten knowledge. Therefore social interactions lie at the core of engineering practice. The article argues for relocating engineering studies from the curricular margins to the core of engineering teaching and research and opens new ways to resolve contested issues in engineering education.