Philosophy of technology/philosophy of science has recently become part of the curriculum of engineering degree programmes in Denmark. However, to what extent do teachers of engineering see it as meaningful for students to work with relatively abstract philosophical concepts such as epistemology, ontology and ethics as part of engineering degree…

Six factors for pursuing an engineering postgraduate programme at Griffith University including (i) programme quality; (ii) employment prospects; (iii) practicality; (iv) personal interest; (v) popularity; and (vi) reputation; and 11 factors for not pursuing this engineering programme including (i) employment prospects; (ii) degree of difficulty;…

Several time-use studies in engineering education have shown that students use less time studying than has been allocated in the curricula. It is questionable whether a scarce use of time can lead to deeper understanding and the ability to apply knowledge in problem-solving. The alarming results from earlier time-use studies led to a search for…

Peer assessment has been studied in various situations and actively pursued as a means by which students are given more control over their learning and assessment achievement. This study investigated the reliability of staff and student assessments in two oral presentations with limited feedback for a school-based thesis course in engineering…

During the last 10 years, new models of funding and training PhD students have been established in Denmark in order to integrate industry into the entire PhD education. Several programmes have been conducted where it is possible to co-finance PhD scholarships or to become an employee as an industrial PhD in a company. An important question is what…

Simulation is the process of executing a model that describes a system with enough detail; this model has its entities, an internal state, some input and output variables and a list of processes bound to these variables. Teaching a simulation language such as general purpose simulation system (GPSS) is always a challenge, because of the way it…

Many recent teaching initiatives in engineering education have the underlying premise of improving student engagement with global issues and providing first-hand experience of complex problems associated with sustainable development and production. A greater understanding of actual motivational drivers may help in student recruitment and…

The highest rate of accidents and injuries in British industries has been reported by the construction industry during the past decade. Since then stakeholders have recognised that a possible solution would be to inculcate a good attitude towards health and safety risk management in undergraduate civil engineering students and construction…

In this article a study is presented in which teachers describe the working situation at their school. The aim of the study was to find out in what respects the school needed to be developed. The study was a case study and the method for collecting data was focus group dialogues. All teacher teams at a Swedish secondary school participated. The…

In an effort to make decisions about teacher education policy and practice that were informed by research and evidence, participants in Boston College's "Teachers for a New Era" Evidence Team (http://www.teachersforanewera.org) designed a portfolio of assessments and studies. This article describes one project in the portfolio--a series of surveys…

The purpose of the study was to examine student teachers' perceptions of teaching writing in kindergartens and to identify to what extent the cooperating teachers influence the student teachers' perceptions. To achieve the research aims, a 31-item questionnaire was developed by the researchers and administered to 50 student teachers and their…

It is important that trainee teachers in the faculties of education should develop their critical thinking skills so that they can meet the expectations and needs of their profession. This study aimed at investigating the relationship between critical thinking skills and in-class questioning behaviours of English Language Teaching (ELT) students…

The purpose of this study was to examine the teaching concerns of Turkish student teachers and how these concerns differ among year groups within the teacher education programme. Data were collected from 339 student teachers using the Teacher Concerns Checklist. Analysis of the data, including both descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis…

In this article, some of the ways in which thinking about chaos theory can help teachers and student-teachers to accept uncertainty and randomness as natural conditions in the classroom are considered. Building on some key features of complex systems commonly attributed to chaos theory (e.g. complexity, nonlinearity, sensitivity to initial…

This article explains the process that is causing systems of teacher education in the EU, the USA and elsewhere to converge into a form of fewer qualitative distinctions. We argue that expansion brought about by processes familiar to globalisation is creating wide differences in the cost of information that incentivises use of standardised…