Engineering and Social Justice: Negotiating the spectrum of liminality

Book chapter, 2010

Throughout their education, engineering students develop an understanding that engineering is mostly about problem solving, technical development, efficiency, and profit making. Thus the idea of engineering focussed on social justice challenges the view many engineering students have of their future profession. This study explores these challenges as a potential threshold for students. However, rather than only being a threshold for students entering engineering we suggest that social justice serves as a threshold for the whole discipline and that this in turn implicates the development of current ways of thinking and practising of engineering. This discussion brings to the forefront the question of expertise and who may judge what are these ways of thinking.