An introduction to engineering and engineering design

Methodic design of a measurement and control system for climate control in horticulture

The practices of students, teachers, educational policymakers and managers are laden with assumptions of fact and value. Clearly, assumptions of value influence the way in which individuals and groups construe the nature and purpose of education, but this should not blind us to the existence of assumptions of fact about how to promote learning and improve the conduct and organisation of teaching. Many of these assumptions of fact may be false or inadequate, and as such they may limit the success of our educational endeavours. Using the UK's national literacy strategy as its principal illustration, this paper shows how a Popperian approach to science can advance our knowledge of what is the case about learning, teaching, and the organisation and conduct of formal education, and how such a non-positivist science can contribute to the improvement of educational practice.

background

How science can contribute to the improvement of educational practice

We may fairly enough call educational practice a kind of social engineering. Giving it that name at once provokes notice that as an art it is much more backward than branches of physical engineering, like land surveying, bridge-building and construction of railways. The reason is obvious. After all allowance is made for less systematic training for persons who engage in the art of education, the outstanding fact is that the sciences which must be drawn upon to supply scientific content to the work of the practitioner in education are themselves less mature than those which furnish the intellectual content of engineering. The huma sciences that are sources of the scientific content of education-biol-

Knowing and Doing

Popper’s theory of learning is sometimes met with incredulity because Popper claims that there is no transference of knowledge or knowledge elements from outside the individual, neither from the physical environment nor from others. Instead, he claims that we can improve our present theories by discovering their inadequacies.The intent of this article is not to persuade educators to adopt Popper’s approach uncritically to build their professional knowledge. Rather, it presents a discussion on the need for teachers to adopt a critical approach in eliminating what is inadequate and preserve what is adequate by modifying or abandoning whatever traditions or practices that are inadequate to improve their teaching practice. Popper claims that knowledge advances by searching for and eliminating error contained in our theory. In other words, we can improve our present theories by finding out their inadequacies.

Should Popper’s View of Rationality Be Used for Promoting Teacher Knowledge?

Companies normally hire external consultants to carry out their business process re-engineering. While this can be simple and efficient in the short term, it may not be convenient in the mid and long term. A low level of workers' involvement with a consequent resistance to changes, and a continuous dependency on external consultancy are the main drawbacks. We propose an alternative approach to BPR in which company workers play an active and important role re-designing the organization's processes in a cooperative style. The method includes stepwise refinement and is expected to generate better results than the traditional approach.

An introduction to engineering and engineering design

Citations

Methodic design of a measurement and control system for climate control in horticulture

How science can contribute to the improvement of educational practice

Knowing and Doing

Should Popper’s View of Rationality Be Used for Promoting Teacher Knowledge?

PAWS: towards a participatory approach to business process reengineering

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