Experiences of sustainable design among practicing engineers? Implications for engineering education

An understanding of sustainable design will be essential for engineers to practice responsibly in the future. What sustainable design means in practice is a contested issue, varying between engineering disciplines, industry sectors and even individual practitioners. How then can we, as engineering educators, encourage and teach both current professional engineers and engineering students about sustainable design. This paper reports on the results of an empirical study investigating qualitatively different ways that sustainable design has been experienced by practicing engineers. The different ways of experiencing sustainable design were found using a qualitative research method known as phenomenography. This research method revealed the critical variations in the ways twenty-two practicing engineers described their experiences of sustainable design in one-on-one interviews. An in depth description of the research method and the processes undertaken in this research is presented in Mann, L.M.W., D. Radcliffe, and G. Dall'Alba. (2007). This current paper presents an in depth discussion of the results and the implications they have for the practice of sustainable design, and for engineering education. Five different ways of experiencing sustainable design were found; sustainable design as 'solution finding', 'reductionist problem solving', 'holistic problem solving', 'social network problem solving, and 'a way of life'. Descriptions of each of these ways of experiencing sustainable design are presented, including illustrative quotes from the practicing engineers, as well as an overall hierarchy demonstrating the relationships between the ways of experiencing sustainable design. By understanding how different people have experienced and conceptualize sustainable design within engineering practice, recommendations are made for how to educate engineering students about sustainable design. Implications for the practice of sustainable design are also made.