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Situation critical: critical theoryand critical thinking in engineeringeducationLionel Claris a & Donna Riley ba Smith College, Picker Engineering Program, 100 Green St.,Northampton, 01063, USAb Smith College, Picker Engineering Program, 51 College Lane,Northampton, 01063, USA

Available online: 01 Feb 2012

To cite this article: Lionel Claris & Donna Riley (2012): Situation critical: critical theory and criticalthinking in engineering education, Engineering Studies, DOI:10.1080/19378629.2011.649920

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Situation critical: critical theory and critical thinking in engineering

education

Lionel Clarisa and Donna Rileyb*

aSmith College, Picker Engineering Program, 100 Green St., Northampton 01063, USA;bSmith College, Picker Engineering Program, 51 College Lane, Northampton 01063, USA

(Received 13 May 2010; final version received 5 September 2011)

Over the last decade, there has been an increased focus on developing criticalthinking (CT) skills within the engineering curriculum. Typically, the practice ofCT occurs fragmentarily in a singular, limited context, within one of severalABET learning outcomes. Drawing on critical theory, theories of moraldevelopment, and pedagogies of liberation, we examine and challenge concep-tions of CT presently used in engineering education. We develop a reflexive viewof CT, leading to CT not only within but also about engineering. In thisframework, CT can no longer be reduced to the application of skills, but isreconceived as creative action resulting from reflective engagement with epistemicassumptions. We implemented this integrative approach to CT across multiplecourse contexts and educational outcomes in engineering, finding that thinkingcritically about engineering can challenge power/knowledge relationships, critiqueengineering epistemologies, engage in reflective and reflexive practice, and workrelationally for social justice.

Keywords: power/knowledge; critical pedagogy; reflexivity; reflective judgment

Introduction

In the last decade there has been an increased emphasis in engineering education onthe development of critical thinking (CT) skills, owing in part to the introduction ofthe ABET 2000 criteria. CT in engineering education occurs mostly in a focusedcontext, directed toward fulfilling one of several Accreditation Board on Engineeringand Technology (ABET) learning outcomes. Reviewing the literature one findsdiscussions of CT in the contexts of problem solving,1 conducting experiments,2

ethical decision-making,3 open-ended design,4 and assessing the social impacts of

*Corresponding author. Email: driley@smith.edu

1See, for example, Mina, Omidvar, and Knott, ‘‘Learning to Think Critically’’; Lombardo,‘‘Using Small Blocks of Time’’; and Papadopoulos, Rahman, and Bostwick, ‘‘AssessingCritical Thinking.’’2Miller and Olds, ‘‘Encouraging Critical Thinking’’; and Bruno and Anderson, ‘‘UsingObjective-Driven Heat Transfer Lab Experiences.’’3Wolverton and Wolverton, ‘‘Implementation of Ethics Education’’; and Swalie and Kreppel,‘‘Building Critical Thinking.’’4Lunt and Helps, ‘‘Problem Solving in Engineering Technology’’; and Gurmen et al.,‘‘Improving Critical Thinking.’’

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� 2012 Taylor & Francis

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technology.5 In this work CT is applied within these focused elements of engineeringbut not about engineering itself.

We have long ago reached a certain ‘situation critical’ in engineering, in whichengineers may have abundant logical thinking skills but no practice of thinkingcritically about problem framing,6 power relations within the profession,7 hegemonicepistemologies of the discipline,8 or reproductive practices of engineering education.9

This leaves society with technologies that replicate power relations of the statusquo,10 and the profession with intractable problems around underrepresentation ofwhite women and women and men of color,11 and few tools for understanding ortalking about these problems, let alone acting effectively for change.12

While the origins of the phrase ‘situation critical’ are obscure, it has a history inmilitary ‘situation reports’ in both the US and Great Britain.13 Battle situations weredescribed as critical at least as early as the Crimean War; Arthur Griffiths’s historyThe Thin Red Line describes the situation of the famed 93rd regiment at the Battle ofBalaclava: ‘The situation was critical. To advance would be madness; retreat was notto be thought of; yet it might cost them their lives to maintain the ground theyheld.’14 Situation reports may have been shortened to terse phrases as militarycommunications technologies required. The diary of a British Naval officer at thebeginning of World War I describes receiving a communication aborting an order toinvade Austria with the explanation ‘situation critical.’15 Situation critical describesgrave danger; we mean to invoke this in our discussion in multiple senses. Engineers’imbalanced educations contribute to many very real situations critical – from theFord Pinto to the Shuttle Challenger, from Hurricane Katrina to the MontrealMassacre. And to challenge the situation normal (or SNAFU, to use anothermilitary phrase) in engineering is also to enter dangerous territory.

CT ought to entail more than the conventional practices in engineering:considering and articulating assumptions in problem solving; selecting appropriatehypotheses/methods for experiments; considering multiple perspectives in an ethicscase study; assessing social impacts of technology; and structuring open-endeddesign problems. CT also ought to entail thinking critically about engineering, askingquestions about the production of technology and our relationship to it: Who doesengineering, and for whom? Who decides what is and is not engineering, and whatways of knowing (epistemologies) are appropriate to the discipline? Who benefitsand who loses from engineering? How do social, political, cultural, and economicstructures create our present understanding of scientific knowledge, and thetechnologies we engineer based upon that knowledge?

5Nelson, ‘‘Impact of Technology.’’6Downey, ‘‘Are Engineers Losing Control of Technology?’’7Zussman, Mechanics of the Middle Class, 122–3; and Vaughan, The Challenger LaunchDecision, 1996.8Waller, ‘‘Fish is Fish.’’9Riley, ‘‘Employing Liberative Pedagogies’’; and Hacker, Pleasure, Power, and Technology.10See, for example, Winner, ‘‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?’’; Loader, Cyberspace Divide; andLerman, Lerman, and Mohun, Gender and Technology.11NSF, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities; Slaton, Race, Rigor, and Selectivity;and Tonso, On the Outskirts of Engineering.12Riley, Engineering and Social Justice.13‘‘situation, n.’’ Oxford English Dictionary.14Griffiths, The Thin Red Line, 110.15Wilson, ‘‘H.M.S. Indefatigable,’’ 1915, 467.

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We seek to foreground a new ‘situation critical’ that emerges when the ‘critical’ in‘CT’ comes into dialogical relationship with the ‘critical’ in ‘critical theory’ and‘critical pedagogy.’ When CT is not limited to the logical ability to identify a faultyargument, but includes the reflective and reflexive16 practice of being ethically andsocially responsive, CT becomes not just a way of thinking but also a way of being.17

Central to this new kind of situation critical is a focus on power relations,18 both interms of how structures of power and structures of knowledge interrelate and interms of how ethical and social response-ability relies on recognizing and resistingunjust power relations.

In this paper, we review conventional conceptions of CT in engineering, anddraw on critical theory and theories of moral development to create a moreexpansive approach to CT. Because engineering is arriving late to the epistemicupheavals that other disciplines have already undergone, we are able to make eclecticuse of theorists from a number of disciplines; not all their positions are necessarilycompatible with one another, and we do not attempt to align them here. Somescholarship fits into orthodox definitions of critical theory within or descendent fromthe Frankfurt School; other scholarship may be thought of as critical theory broadlyconstrued as offering a critique of power structures and providing new routes fortransformation toward justice.19 Each theory suggests something important aboutCT, offering dimensions of reflectivity, reflexivity, or epistemic awareness. Becauseanalysis is never neutral, analysis itself needs to be engaged in critical reflections; wehope that juxtaposing this diverse range of theorists can produce new thinking aboutengineering education and practice.

The next section of this paper critically considers six conventional conceptions ofCT in engineering, with a view toward how these theories are represented in theengineering education literature. In the third section, we offer four themes that aremissing from dominant conceptions of CT in engineering education, but are essentialfor thinking critically about as well as in engineering. We conclude with somesuggestions for implementing this approach to criticality in engineering education,arguing for its integration with core curricular material.

Conceptions of CT in engineering education

This section examines how the engineering education literature represents theories ofCT. We reference the works of engineering educators who are in turn referencingscholars of CT, because it is important to consider both the theory itself and howengineering educators apply and interpret these theories.

We considered the mainstream engineering education literature (in the UnitedStates) to include primarily the proceedings of the American Society of EngineeringEducation and Frontiers in Education conferences and the Journal of EngineeringEducation. We defined the literature narrowly in order to draw out the mostcommonly accepted notions of CT among engineering educators. Our references to‘engineering educators’ should therefore not be construed to paint all engineering

16A reflection that is critical of its own power relations can be thought of as reflexive; theseterms are discussed in more depth later in this paper.17Burbules and Berk, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy,’’ 62.18Foucault, ‘‘The Subject and Power.’’19Bohrman, ‘‘Critical Theory.’’

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educators with the same broad brush, but rather to characterize mainstreamapproaches within the discipline. In fact, many of the individual scholars cited hereare proponents of a variety of reform efforts in engineering education; forays intoCT may facilitate challenges to certain norms in the discipline. However, we arguethat the conceptions of CT used in this literature are too narrow and limit the scopeof change that is possible.

We have identified six conventional conceptions, each discussed in their ownsubsection below. First, we address mainstream conceptions of CT as comprisingskills and dispositions, in contrast with a primary emphasis on skills in engineeringeducation. Second, we consider the centrality of narrow notions of reason andvalidity in definitions of CT and note the lack of definition or critique of thesenotions in engineering education. We then consider the role of questions inengineering educators’ use of the Socratic method to teach CT. We take up the roleof reflection in CT, and the reduction of reflection to meta-cognition in theengineering education literature. We then engage with King and Kitchener’s idea ofreflective judgment20 and the omission of key ideas regarding epistemic assumptionswhen engineering educators reference the work. Finally, we consider the relatedconcept of creative thinking and its promise and limitations as applied withinengineering.

Skills and dispositions

The mainstream approach to CT is perhaps best captured in the Delphi report,21 aconsensus document developed by a group of leading academics. This document, aswell as later work by Delphi participants Richard Paul22 and Robert Ennis,23

describes CT as comprising two elements: cognitive skills and affective disposition.Paul’s work is frequently cited in the engineering education literature on CT. This

may be due in part to a short guidebook tailored to engineering and distributedamong engineering faculty by Paul’s Foundation for Critical Thinking.24 Thestandards of CT presented include clarity, logic, accuracy, precision, breadth, depth,relevance, significance, completeness, and fairness.25 The pamphlet also defines a setof characteristic intellectual traits (dispositions), including intellectual humility andempathy, confidence in reason and logic, autonomy of thought, courage andperseverance, fair-mindedness, and integrity.

Burbules and Berk, in their integration of critical theory and CT, affirm the moveto include dispositions because they agree with mainstream CT scholars that acritical world-view must underlie any specific content or skills in CT.26 However,they note that this mainstream view is still too limited because it does notacknowledge the centrality of social relations in criticality, presuming instead thatcritical processes occur within an individual.27

20King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment.21Facione, Critical Thinking.22Paul and Elder, Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking.23Ennis, Critical Thinking.24Paul, Niewoehner, and Elder, Engineering Reasoning.25Paul and Elder, Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking.26Burbules and Berk, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy,’’ 48.27Ibid., 49.

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Even though much of the engineering education literature references workadvocating the skills-plus-dispositions approach, most work discusses CT in terms ofskills alone. One reason for this may simply be the ubiquity of the phrase ‘CT skills’and a lack of ‘critical’ attention to its usage in echoing this accepted jargon.28 Amongthose engineering education authors who explicitly include dispositions is Douglas,29

who cites Mason’s review and synthesis of CT definitions30 (which includes the workof Ennis and Paul, among others). Jessop also draws on the notion of dispositionwhen she says that ‘[critical thinking] is a state of mind that continually questions‘‘Who? What? Where? How? Why?’’’31

Reason and validity

Central to most mainstream definitions of CT is the idea of evaluating the quality ofan argument based on standards of logic and reason that form the basis of validityjudgments. This reliance on particular conceptions of reason and validity reflects anepistemological outlook grounded in positivism – the notion that the only validknowledge is that derived from observation of natural phenomena or fromexperimentation using the scientific method.32

Several engineering education authors33 use the following definition of CT:

‘Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfullyconceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, or evaluating information gatheredfrom, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication,as a guide to belief and action.’34 (emphasis added)

Alfrey and Cooney articulate these same ideas in their own definition:

‘The ability to analyze carefully and logically information and ideas from multipleperspectives. This skill is demonstrated in the ability to analyze complex issues andmake informed decisions; synthesize information in order to arrive at reasonedconclusions; evaluate the logic, validity, and relevance of the data; solve challengingproblems; and use knowledge and understanding in order to generate and explore newquestions.’35 (emphasis added)

28As a testament to the power of the phrase, we note that even after we developed a sense thatCT was not a skill, the phrase has slipped into our own writing unawares (e.g., Riley andClaris, ‘‘Developing and Assessing Student Lifelong Learning’’).29Douglas, ‘‘The Practice of Critical Thinking.’’30Mason, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Learning,’’ 2007, 343–4.31Jessop, ‘‘Expanding Our Students’ Brainpower,’’ un-paginated.32‘‘Positivism,’’ A Dictionary of Philosophy, 1967. While some may argue this definition isreductive, removing many of the nuances in positivism as a philosophical movement, it is thisessence that is operationalized in engineering, often in extreme forms and without awarenessof philosophical debates.33High and Damron, ‘‘Paired-Course and Peer-Tutoring Impact on Critical Thinking’’;Jessop, ‘‘Expanding Our Students’ Brainpower’’; Lewis, Hieb, and Wheatley, ‘‘ExplicitTeaching of Critical Thinking’’; and Donawa, Martin, and White, ‘‘Re-EngineeringEngineering,’’ 9.34Scriven and Paul, ‘‘Defining Critical Thinking.’’35Alfrey and Cooney, ‘‘Developing a Rubric to Assess Critical Thinking,’’ un-paginated (firstpage of article).

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Jacquez et al. also draw on reason and validity in developing the followinginformal definition:

‘Critical thinking has to be exercised whenever a decision has to be made on a problemthat has more than one solution. Critical thinking requires reliable information andevidence, so one can make a decision based on scientific principles. An individualexperience, basic intuition and engineering reasoning are integral parts of a criticalthinking process. Critical thinking involves asking well-thought out questions andevaluating a variety of solutions. A small amount of skepticism is required to improvethe thinking process and to evaluate the evidence. Judgment has to be made afterweighing the pros and cons in a sound manner.’36 (emphasis added)

All of these conceptions of CT value reason but do not appear to challengeimplicit reasoning frames, methodologies, or epistemologies: Jacquez et al. point to‘scientific principles’ and ‘engineering reasoning’ but they do not define them further.The concern for this particular kind of validity obscures an understanding of powerrelations, which might involve asking who determines the criteria for valid reasoning,or whose version of reason or logic or intellectual discipline is deemed acceptable orconsidered universal (here: science/engineering). Instead, concerns about powerrelations are reductively interpreted as ‘bias’ that can render an argument invalid.37

CT as questioning

Because of the strong role questions can play in CT, some engineering educators38

advocate the Socratic method to emphasize CT. Advocates point out the activelearning aspects of posing questions to students rather than lecturing them.Exemplary practice might include asking students to identify logical flaws inpresented material; questioning students directly to encourage them to providesound reasoning or data behind their claims and analysis; and peer critiques ofwriting. Because the instructor maintains control of the questioning process, thisform of CT is limited. The questions posed via the Socratic method may engagestudents more than a traditional lecture format, but they miss opportunities forcriticality if they do not focus on structures of engineering thought, and if they donot question the Socratic method itself.

Meta-cognition and reflection

Robert Ennis offers a concise definition of CT cited by several engineeringeducators:39 ‘critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused ondeciding what to believe or do.’40 Having considered reason and judgments ofvalidity previously, here we take up the issue of reflection. Reflection is interpretedexplicitly or implicitly in much of the engineering education literature as meta-cognition (thinking about one’s thought or learning processes).

36Jacquez et al., ‘‘Enhancing Critical Thinking Skills.’’37Burbules and Berk, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy,’’ 46–7.38Golanbari and Garlikov, ‘‘Employing Socratic Pedagogy’’; and Agrawal, ‘‘Integration ofCritical Thinking and Technical Communication.’’39Donawa, Martin, and White, ‘‘Re-Engineering Engineering,’’ 9; and Lewis, Hieb, andWheatley, ‘‘Explicit Teaching of Critical Thinking.’’40Ennis, ‘‘A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking,’’ 10.

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For example, Pierce and colleagues present a rubric for engineering judgment/CTthat utilizes ‘reflection’ as an essential component.41 Level one is simply described as‘unreflective’; level two describes ‘vague reasoning’ at the novice level. Level three islabeled ‘reflective,’ defined as students utilizing multiple observations and validreasoning, and making new connections to reach a conclusion. Level four is labeled‘meta-cognitive’: here students demonstrate an awareness of their learning, andtransfer knowledge outside the course, in addition to exhibiting the ‘reflective’ traits.This use of language limits ‘reflection’ to something pre-meta-cognitive, and guts itof much of its meaning.42

High and Damron utilize a definition of CT that echoes Ennis: ‘reasonablereflective thinking that is focused on . . . assessing the authenticity, accuracy, and/orworth of knowledge claims and arguments.’43 Through one of the exercises High andDamron gave to students combining writing with CT prompts, they observed that‘the exercise made [students] question their own assumptions about design andengineering.’44 It is not clear to what kinds of assumptions the authors refer – are theassumptions questioned still within engineering (i.e., utilizing prevailing approachesto engineering reasoning or epistemology vs. alternative approaches), or might somestudents get to CT about engineering by developing an awareness of those framesand reflecting on their implications?

The Canadian Green Guide to Teaching for Critical Thinking includes a discussionof a ‘reflexive disposition’ necessary for CT. Indeed, this is as close as the CTliterature cited in engineering education seems to get to critical theory,45 definingreflexivity as ‘a self-regulated capability to plan ahead for CT, monitor its qualitythroughout, and reflect on the strengths and limitations of intellectual deliberationsand on the use of intellectual habits in making a judgement.’46 This is one definitionof reflexivity: CT that is critical of itself (in the critical theory sense). The GreenGuide’s ‘big tent’ approach suggests that this dimension is implicit in other models ofCT; however, for reflexivity to be at all meaningful, it must be practiced explicitly.

Reflexivity as conceived by critical theorists is an application of the discipline’scritique (concerned with power relations and social transformation) to the self –including the self as an individual as well as the discipline and thought processes ofcritical theory itself. It cannot be reduced to merely ‘self-directed, self-disciplined,self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking,’47 because this would potentiallyremove the requisite attention to power relations, as well as the requisite attentionto one’s own disciplinary systems of thought. Nor is reflexivity the same as, ‘adeliberate metacognitive (thinking about thinking) and cognitive (thinking) actwhereby a person reflects on the quality of the reasoning process simultaneously

41Pierce et al., ‘‘Assessment of Environments for Fostering Effective Critical Thinking.’’42For example, Boud, Keogh, and Walker, Reflection, view reflection as the process that linksexperience to learning; without reflection, one does not learn from experience. In reflection, anexperience is revived, feelings surrounding it are processed, and the experience is evaluated inlight of existing knowledge.43High and Damron, ‘‘Are Freshman Engineering Students Able to Think and WriteCritically?’’44Ibid.45The authors even cite critical theorist Habermas, Moral Consciousness.46Van Gyn, Ford, and Associates, Teaching for Critical Thinking, 30.47Paul and Elder, Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking, 1.

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while reasoning to a conclusion’48 (emphasis in original). Both of these mainstreamCT definitions describe self-correction and meta-cognition, but not a questioning ofthe structure or process of ‘reason.’ In this mainstream approach, the CT process isrevisited in order to compare it with an ideal process, not to question the ideal or itsnorms (reason, logic).

When cited in the engineering education literature, the notion of reflexivitypresented in the Green Guide is reduced to meta-cognition. Romkey and Chengdescribe it as ‘one’s ability to self-regulate and plan ahead when it comes to criticalthinking.’49 This truncation of the Green Guide’s definition closes the door on criticaltheory’s potential to question the assumptions of CT.

Even in references where there is a strong notion of CT as allowing criticism ofitself, there is no mention of power relations in the production of thought, which candistort analysis of engineering situations. For example, Niewoehner50 uses theColumbia shuttle disaster as a case study for CT. Interestingly, the power relationswithin NASA are not discussed, though they receive prominent attention elsewhereas being relevant to understanding the event.51 Instead the organization is treated asa single (uncritical) ‘thinker.’ This illustrates the limitations of the mainstreamconsensus definition of CT as occurring within individuals rather than being anactivity of social relations involving institutions and ideologies. Meta-cognition,while key to any student-centered approach to learning, does not provide certainelements of criticality found in reflexivity.

Reflective judgment

Developmental psychologists Karen King and Patricia Kitchener present a model ofreflective judgment, which they distinguish from mainstream notions of CT that havede-emphasized reflection.52 King and Kitchener note that, conventionally, CT islimited to logical thinking skills and formally structured problem-solving processes,both of which ignore underlying epistemic assumptions, disallow uncertainty, andrely exclusively on the scientific method.53 They invoke Dewey’s reflective thinking,54

which addresses real-world problems that cannot be addressed with formal logic,requiring reflection and judgment in the face of uncertainty.55

Central to their model is an attention to epistemic assumptions: their extensiveexperimental work has examined how people develop beliefs according to theirassumptions about knowledge. From this work, they developed a model that tracksstudents’ progress through successive sets of epistemic assumptions.56 Studentsgradually learn to hold epistemic assumptions that allow for increasingly reflectivethinking.57 The highest level of thinking in the reflective judgment model requires

48Moore, Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis, 2.49Romkey and Cheng, ‘‘The Development and Assessment of Critical Thinking.’’50Niewoehner, Steidle, and Johnson, ‘‘The Loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia.’’51See, for example, Starbuck and Farjoun, Organization at the Limit; and Columbia AccidentInvestigation Board, Final Report.52King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment, 1.53Ibid., 9.54Dewey, How We Think.55King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment, 6.56Ibid., 44.57Ibid., 13.

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students understand that knowledge is constructed, reflect critically on thisconstruction, and make an informed judgment. King and Kitchener point out that‘judgment demonstrates . . . a willingness to critique one’s own reasoning.’58 Thisfocus on epistemic assumptions embedded in the construction of knowledge suggeststhe possibility for one to critique one’s own reasoning and in doing so questionreason itself, but the authors do not make this explicit and it is not an essentialelement of reflective judgment as they define it.

A few engineering education researchers59 cite King and Kitchener, but they donot make use of the model’s key focus on epistemic assumptions. One scholar, Ibeh,comes to epistemology through a different definition of CT given by Kurfiss,60

incorporating subject knowledge, motivation and goals, meta-cognition, andknowledge creation.61 Ibeh further discusses applying knowledge in new ways andethical responsibility for knowledge. While this definition goes beyond thetraditional structure and epistemology of mainstream notions of CT, it is notcritical of engineering reason and does not make reflexivity and power relationsessential elements.

Critical and creative thinking

Some engineering education authors draw on the literature on creative thinking toexpand CT definitions. Freeman draws on de Bono62 to define creative thinking,which includes components of the engineering design process (concept formation,generating possibilities, developing alternatives, comparison and choice, design,problem solving) and ‘skills’ outside of traditional CT such as recognition,perception, interpreting clues, and, perhaps most important, values and feelings.Noting that ‘the key is thinking about knowledge in new ways,’ Freeman argues that‘in creative thinking ambiguity is far from fatal, and mistakes may, in fact, be helpfulif students are prepared to learn from them.’63

Catalano,64 utilizing mainstream notions of CT, generated a different sense ofcreative thinking in his course on developing an environmentally informedengineering ethic. While reinforcing some of the common CT dispositions (courage,integrity, openness to new ideas), he additionally identifies other characteristics thatclearly break with convention (including passion for change; restlessness of the mind;capability to play; freedom of thought; self-knowledge). Self-knowledge suggests adepth of reflection not recognized in the mainstream CT definitions. Play evokesembodiment while passion affords emotion a central role.

Many of these dispositions – particularly those that incorporate feelings,appreciate ambiguity, and emphasize freedom and change – challenge conventionalCT’s strict adhesion to ‘reason’ and scientific epistemology. We would like to takethis challenge a step further and argue that the question of creative thought must, ifit is to be critical, also include the interrogation of structures and processes of

58Ibid., 71.59Felder and Brent, ‘‘Understanding Student Differences’’; Alfrey and Cooney, ‘‘Developing aRubric to Assess Critical Thinking’’; and Douglas, ‘‘The Practice of Critical Thinking.’’60Kurfiss, Critical Thinking, cited in Ibeh, ‘‘Research, Report Writing, and Representation.’’61Ibeh, ‘‘Research, Report Writing, and Representation’’.62de Bono, Edward de Bono’s Mind Power.63Freeman, ‘‘Critical Thinking, Communications, and Teamwork.’’64Catalano, ‘‘Developing an Environmentally Friendly Engineering Ethic.’’

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thought and knowledge creation. Are students also engaged, for example, withcreative thinking about the templates, frames, and norms of creative thinking?

Critical theory and CT about engineering

Here we highlight four themes from critical theory and critical pedagogy that aremissing from mainstream conceptions of CT in engineering education, but that weargue are essential for CT in and about engineering: (1) analysis of the co-construction of power and knowledge in engineering; (2) an epistemic awareness thatincludes a critique of the scientific method and of positivist reason; (3) a creativepractice that is both reflective and reflexive; and (4) a grounding in praxis orientedtoward social justice.

Power/knowledge relations

Mainstream notions of CT do not adequately consider power effects in theconstruction of knowledge. Kincheloe’s ‘critical CT’65 draws on Foucault’s ‘regimeof truth’66 to deconstruct uncritical cognitive notions of CT. Brookfield develops adefinition of CT that accounts for power/knowledge relationships: ‘Critical theoryviews thinking critically as being able to identify, and then to challenge and change,the process by which a grossly iniquitous society uses dominant ideology to convincepeople this is a normal state of affairs.’67 Kincheloe argues that the potential forpeople to emancipate themselves from dominant ideologies, their underlyingassumptions, and their power effects, is what distinguishes critical theory’s senseof CT from philosophical or psychological models.68

Many engineers would surely reject this focus on power relations in theproduction of knowledge, viewing ‘critical CT’ as political or biased. But Burbulesand Berk, drawing on the tradition of critical pedagogy, note this is a fallacy thatelides the ‘regime of truth’69 already operating within the dominant conceptions ofCT, idealizing objectivity and universalizing positivist epistemic frames.70 AsAugusto Boal notes in his introduction to Theatre of the Oppressed,71 ‘all theateris necessarily political, because all activities of man [sic] are political, and theater isone of them.’ He goes on to say that demands for objectivity in the face of this realityare themselves political acts. Critical theory, or critical CT, then, may be labeledpolitical because it calls out underlying politics and makes them explicit, but it is nomore (nor less) political than hegemonic forms of engineering and the powerstructures behind them.

Does one need critical theory to get to the place of criticality we describe? Mostcritical theorists are critical enough of their own theories to resist the claim that onemust employ their particular approach. At the same time, these approaches get towhere we propose engineering needs to be: namely, interrogating the power

65Kincheloe, ‘‘Making Critical Thinking Critical,’’ 27.66Foucault, ‘‘Truth and Power,’’ 131–3.67Brookfield, The Power of Critical Theory, viii.68Kincheloe, ‘‘Making Critical Thinking Critical,’’ 24.69Foucault, ‘‘Truth and Power,’’ 131–3.70Burbules and Berk, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy,’’ 55. Or according to hooks,Teaching to Transgress, 37: ‘no education is politically neutral.’71Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, ix.

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structures and epistemological frameworks of engineering, as well as emergentalternatives. It may not be sufficient, for example, to use only positivist frames toengage such a project; one needs to use critical approaches that create an awarenessof these frames, and challenge them from within, even as we cannot be outside orabove them.72 Rather than assuming a separation between the critic (subject) andwhat is critiqued (object of knowledge), reflexive criticality is made possible in thespace where this division is questioned.

Toward transgressive validity: critique of positivist reason for ethical epistemologies

The second theme we wish to draw out from critical theory is an examination ofepistemology, and in particular, a critique of positivist reason and a post-positivistnotion of what might constitute a new knowledge validity in engineering thinking.Critical theorists often work at a point of aporia,73 exploring new ideas that call intoquestion ‘even our own presuppositions – the ones without which we literally do notknow how to think and act.’74 Positivist epistemology lies in this realm ofpresupposition for the typical engineer. One must first reflect on what positivistframes might exclude – think critically about engineering – in order to see how‘reason,’ the scientific method, and an ideal of objectivity are constructed for andlimited to a particular context in engineering. As Lather puts it:

‘It is not a matter of looking harder or more closely, but of seeing what frames ourseeing – spaces of constructed visibility and incitements to see which constitute power/knowledge. Rather than epistemological guarantees, such concerns reframe validity asmultiple, partial, endlessly deferred. They construct a site of development for a validityof transgression that runs counter to the standard validity of correspondence: anonreferential validity interested in how discourse does its work [. . .].’75

Brookfield’s76 notion of thinking critically reflects on the limited positivist frameand incorporates political, social, and ethical aspects of thinking, not just the logicalor psychological. Of course, argumentation skills are essential for CT and valuable inthe engineering field. Being able to recognize false inferences and logical fallacies, orbeing able to distinguish bias from fact, opinion from evidence, are essential;however, such skills focus on cognitive processes to the neglect of social and politicalcritique.

For ‘reason’ to be universal and unchanging under positivism, it can becomenecessary to set aside much of one’s life experience outside of intellectual argument.

72For Foucault there is no way out of power relations. In ‘‘The Thought from the Outside’’ hepresents a kind of thinking that interrogates its self-enclosedness and in doing so may touch onsomething outside of its particular embodiment, but not outside of thought or power per se(Foucault, ‘‘The Thought from the Outside’’).73Aporia is from the Greek and Latin aporos, meaning without a poros: without a path, apassage. Aporia is a term that has come to mean today something more like a state ofpuzzlement or paradox. It is when one allows oneself to experiment with the experience of theunknown, the undecidable, or an experience of doubt, of being at a loss, or the inability toresolve a contradiction that something new is created. As Derrida tentatively concludes, ‘I willeven venture to say that ethics, politics, and responsibility, if there are any, will only ever havebegun with the experience and experiment of the aporia’ (Derrida, The Other Heading, 41).74Burbules and Berk, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy,’’ 61.75Lather, Getting Lost, 119.76Brookfield, The Power of Critical Theory, vii.

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This alienation of one’s self from one’s thoughts (or a particular type of acceptablethought) makes one complicit with a certain politics of truth. In this context thequestioning and reinvention of reason becomes a vehicle for asserting a fluid kind ofself that is able to continually learn and transcend, not simply memorize. This resultsin students’ deeper understanding of reason and its limitations, from which it is mostsensible to make judgments. To implement such notions in engineering requires oneto question objectivity and authority in science as well as the premise of ‘fair-mindedness’ within mainstream notions of CT.

Several scholars have laid out ways forward in scientific or technical work thatembodies a critique of positivism. For example, Fortun and Bernstein describe aprocess of muddling through that recontextualizes the meaning of science in terms ofits ends and means:

‘Scientific inquiry is not a means to an end, the dispassionate extraction and applicationof certain answers from and to a given reality. Scientific inquiry is the simultaneousproduction of means and ends, the invention of capacities to frame ‘‘really?’’ questionsalong with the creation of realitty in which those questions will find answers. Thesciences are a kind of performance, what they perform is realitty.’77

Their neologism, realitty, captures the notion of changing perceptions andexpressions of reality through time, as successive experimental and epistemologicalapproaches are applied. As with Lather, the point is to become cognizant of whatframes our experiments. This calls for ‘critical reflexive relation’ to both others andthe researcher’s own practices in order for what Haraway calls ‘situated knowledges’to become apparent.78 For Fortun and Bernstein, this means ‘never to claim them asdirect, revealed, transparent truth, but as always depending on particular accounts(in the many senses of that term – fiscal, narrative, and legal.’79 The result of suchreflexive relation in science is what Lather might call ‘voluptuous validity,’ a type oftransgressive validity which, among other things, ‘brings ethics and epistemologytogether.’80

Reflexivity, reflection, and looking into the mirror

The third theme from critical theory we wish to draw out is that of reflection andreflexivity. We have used both terms above, but because they are used in variousways and imbued with numerous meanings throughout the social sciences literature,we seek to articulate our use of the terms here. Allyson Lipp81 provides a helpfulreview defining and relating the concepts, describing how reflexivity can be used bothmethodologically to improve processes of inquiry and as a means of empowermentin personal or professional development.

Lipp views reflection as necessary for reflexivity, while reflexivity in turnimproves the quality of reflection. Moving from reflection to reflexivity requires acritical examination of one’s own knowledge and practice in terms of power rela-tions – thinking critically about rather than within the topic at hand. For example,

77Fortun and Bernstein, Muddling Through, 144.78Haraway, Situated Knowledges, 187.79Fortun and Bernstein, Muddling Through, 59.80Lather, Getting Lost, 129.81Lipp, ‘‘Developing the Reflexive Dimension of Reflection.’’

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reflexivity might include reflection upon power relations in: the process of reflectionitself (meta-reflection); the particular socio-political or socio-historical contextsunder study; the research process and its subjectivities; or epistemic assumptionsunderlying the work. It might also entail self-critique (e.g., ‘what are my motivationsand biases?’ and ‘what are the politics of my location in relation to the work?’) orreflection-in-action (self-correction in the process of one’s practice in order to alterthe performance of power relations toward more socially just ends).82

Taking into account power/knowledge relations, critique of reason, andreflexivity, ‘CT skills’ is much too narrow a term to encompass all of what wemean by CT. Skills suggest an expertise in the application of, and not a reflectionupon, knowledge.83 If CT is not only the ability to think consistently, but also thereflective act of questioning power/knowledge relations (including the expertise ofthe ‘skilled’), then CT cannot be reduced to a set of skills.

We recognize that to be reflective and reflexive is to acknowledge that criticalpedagogy and critical theory are also subject to power relations. Burbules and Berkpoint out that critical pedagogy’s tendency to define what a critical understandingshould be risks imposing hegemonies of knowledge or belief; as ideas becomeaccepted institutionally, advocates can become invested in their perpetuationthrough structures of power.84 Continual vigilance is required to counteract theways in which critical pedagogies are limited in their practice, as we become aware ofthose limitations.

Feminist pedagogy scholars have been particularly helpful at pointing out someof these limitations and moving beyond them. For example, Lather incisively writes:

‘In exploring the limits and possibilities of reading data through the prism of criticaltheory, hegemonic theories have much to teach about how structural forces work. Suchtheories, however, assume an excessive faith in the powers of the reasoning mind on thepart of subjects theorized as unified and capable of full consciousness. Furthermore,they position the ‘‘oppressed’’ as the unfortunately deluded, and critical pedagogues as‘‘transformative intellectuals’’ . . . with privileged knowledge free of false logic andbeliefs.’85

It becomes clear that as critical practioners we must look into the mirror. Notonly must we encourage our students to engage in critically reflexive thinking, but wemust do so ourselves in order to be able to rethink the role of teachers with liberativeintentions. That is, not as holding special knowledge that if transferred will liberate,but as people caught in power/knowledge webs, working to resist them. Mostconcretely, we must reflectively ask questions such as: ‘To what extent is thepedagogy we construct intrusive, invasive, pressured?’86 And, ‘How can we positionourselves as less masters of truth and justice and more as creators of space wherethose directly involved can act and speak on their own behalf?’87

82Ibid.83A skill is typically defined as the ‘capability of accomplishing something with precision andcertainty; practical knowledge in combination with ability; cleverness, expertness. Also, anability to perform a function, acquired or learnt with practice’ (’’skill, n.’’ Oxford EnglishDictionary).84Burbules and Berk, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy,’’ 60–1.85Lather, Getting Smart, 137.86Ibid., 143.87Ibid., 137.

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Praxis and relationality

In critical pedagogy, the critical thinker must not only be able to identifyinjustice, but also be moved to struggle for change.88 Though this change maybegin with the self, it also requires transformation of institutions and ideologies,not merely individuals. This process of change is relational, occurring throughour connectedness to others and grounded in our particular time and place. CTthat grows out of this struggle and leads to reflective, transformative action iswhat Freire called ‘praxis.’89 Krishnamurti points out the urgency of such actionsand distinguishes them from re-actions in that they bring about ‘a totally differentorder in human relationship, which is society.’90 Creative action that brings aboutsocial justice is fostered in the reflective space between CT and the otherwiseconditioned response. This, in turn, is subject to a critical process of reflexivity, inwhich the justice work is re-evaluated and new questions and goals defined.

Paul, Niewoehner, and Elder echo many other engineering educators workingon CT when they acknowledge ‘it is important to . . . deal with the multipleenvironmental, social and ethical aspects that complicate responsible engineer-ing.’91 While a focus on environmental, social, and ethical aspects of engineeringis to be applauded, it is problematic to evoke an abstract ‘responsibleengineering’ that becomes ‘complicated’ by adding social and ethical aspects.Praxis requires that one start from an integral reality, not from reductionistidealizations of the world. How can we make sure that ethical and social aspectsare not reduced to new norms? Multiple-choice tests abound for both CT andengineering ethics,92 reducing relational processes to single-right-answer situationsand disrupting the process of praxis. Harris, Pritchard, and Rabins93 apply theengineering problem-solving approach to ethics cases, complete with a flowdiagram summarizing the process. By contrast, feminist ethicist CarolineWhitbeck94 presents a challenge to this prevailing approach by drawing lessonsfrom the engineering design process (rather than applying it directly), encouragingreaders to acknowledge that ethics is subject to multiple constraints not all ofwhich may be met, thus creating the possibility of multiple, imperfect approachesto resolving a situation. Whitbeck has also critiqued the tendency towardabstraction in engineering ethics (and ethics in general), advocating an agentialapproach to engineering ethics that gives students subjectivity and moral agencyin approaching ethics cases.

Schon points out that ‘[w]henever a professional claims to ‘‘know,’’ in the senseof the technical expert, he [sic] imposes his categories, theories, and techniques on the

88Burbules and Berk, ‘‘Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy,’’ 50–1.89Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 36.90Krishnamurti, The Intent of the Krishnamurti Schools, 27.91Paul, Niewoehner, and Elder, Engineering Reasoning, 1.92Multiple-choice CT tests include California Critical Thinking Skills Test, Watson-GlaserCritical Thinking Appraisal, New Jersey Critical Reasoning Test, and the Cornell CriticalThinking Test (Ennis, ‘‘An Annotated List of Critical Thinking Tests’’). Multiple-choice ethicstests include the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam and educators preparing students forthat exam (e.g., Vigeant et al., ‘‘Ethics for First-Year Engineers’’), Lockheed Martin’s use ofDilbert to teach ethics (Hager, ‘‘Ethics a la Dilbert,’’ which includes a ‘grayness’ designationfor some answers).93Harris, Pritchard, and Rabins, Engineering Ethics.94Whitbeck, Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research.

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situation before him.’95 Schon argues for a different epistemology of practice thanthis traditionally skill/technique-focused application – a ‘reflective practice’96 thatallows for creative adaptation to new situations in real time: reflection-in-action.Though Schon may not have explicitly developed his theories in this direction,reflection-in-action implemented critically requires a dialogical relationship betweentheory and action: praxis.

Implementing CT and critical theory in engineering education

To implement the understanding of CT developed here in engineering education, theauthors have employed critical pedagogy in engineering classrooms and revised bothcore technical and interdisciplinary elective curricula to incorporate content relatedto critical theory, reflective judgment, and science and technology studies. Byemphasizing student reflection, meta-cognition, critical questions, self-directedlearning, and praxis in traditional engineering courses, students and faculty arecritically engaging with the engineering canon and structures of engineering thought.

Critical pedagogy operationalizes critical theory and CT in the classroomthrough its emphasis on power relations and the process of critical questioning.Praxis supports internalizing ideas, which can lead to personal transformation whencombined with reflection and self-knowledge.97 However, transforming pedagogyalso requires new content in order for students to do better in these tasks of reflectionand CT.98 We have sought to develop learning methods and course content thatwould address CT across multiple contexts and educational outcomes and thatwould encourage CT both in and about engineering, where the latter provides aholistic context for the former.99

As students become critical of the norms of engineering, we would expect them tobegin to question their own relationship to engineering. CT about engineering canexpose the constitutive limits of knowledge and self-knowledge. This process can bemotivational, if students engage in a reflective process that not only questions theends of engineering but also asks new questions, those that the student owns, thosethat build new meaning. It is important to acknowledge that it is difficult to think inthis way; student motivation to question engineering runs directly counter to thepower structure of the engineering establishment, just as students are learning tooperate within it in order to reap its promised rewards. Learning the content and itscritique presents contradictions and brings into high relief questions of ethics andepistemology. A shift from investment in the profession to a critical view that mightlead to investment in changing the profession, or in departing, opens up new potentialrelationships to engineering, only some of which rely on, establish, or maintain insiderstatus.

Can introducing the kind of CT we propose here change engineering education?Our experience suggests that students are at least challenged to think differently, andthis may create some dissonance with structures of power in the profession. How

95Schon, The Reflective Practitioner, 345.96Ibid., 14.97Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed; and hooks, Teaching to Transgress.98Mayberry, ‘‘Reproductive and Resistant Pedagogies.’’99Riley, ‘‘Employing Liberative Pedagogies’’; Riley and Claris, ‘‘Developing and AssessingStudent Lifelong Learning’’; Riley and Claris, ‘‘Power/Knowledge’’; and Riley, ‘‘Ethics inContext.’’

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such students may ultimately fare as agents of change in engineering depends on howwidespread this thinking may become, and how effective these new-thinkingengineers may become at developing other abilities, such as organizing for change.

Conclusions

We have highlighted some limitations of conventional notions of CT in engineeringeducation, and brought critical theory to bear on creating a construct for CT in andabout engineering. CT in and about engineering ought to include epistemic awarenessand a critical view of ourselves and the field. CT about engineering brings meaninginto the classroom by drawing together practices of reflection, reflexivity, andthinking critically within engineering. It provides a motivational context, creating arelationship between learners and engineering, unifying the personal, the technical,and the social. Such approaches can and must find their way into core courses in theengineering curriculum; this is not to replace a required course in, say, philosophy ofscience and engineering taught by a philosopher or science and technology studies(STS) scholar, but rather to reinforce such material, demonstrate its importance toengineering, and model its adoption in engineering practice. CT in and aboutengineering will bring about student questioning of course content, learningprocesses, and engineering in society. While ABET outcomes may have created astarting point for CT to garner attention in engineering education, the approacheswe have described here should ultimately lead to a critique of outcome-basededucation and those forms of constraint imposed by accreditation schemasthemselves. Bringing about the ‘situation critical’ advocated here promises to sparkactivities of resistance; however, the proof is in the praxis.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Alice Pawley and Eleanor Jaffee for comments on drafts of this work andparticipants in the 2008 Research in Engineering Education Symposium (REES) symposiumwhere some of these ideas were workshopped. The authors thank the entire LiberativePedagogies Project research team for their contributions and collegiality. The authors thankEngineering Studies reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions that greatly improved thework. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF)under Grant 0448240. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressedin this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.

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