Convergence of Educational Paradigms into Engineering Education 5.0
Eric Forcael, Gonzalo Garcés, Andrés Díaz Lantada
Abstract
Engineering education has evolved over the last decades with the incorporation of innovative pedagogical methods, supporting technologies, and an orientation to societal impacts and sustainability. Such evolution includes a recent shift of prominence, from the obsolete role of professors as unique authorized sources of truth and wisdom, towards more democratic contexts with students as key players, professors as facilitators, and the involvement of societal stakeholders for achieving truly transformative educational experiences. Along this process of change different educational paradigms have prevailed including positivism, constructivism, and the socio-critical and communicative critical paradigms. Frequently, these models have been presented as opposed or incompatible. Not anymore, as according to the authors’ perspective these paradigms converge in a "fluid transformative" paradigm, presented here for the first time, which is adapted for the new highly dynamic context of Engineering Education 5.0.