Jon Leydens is now giving his presentation. He started out with showing a cover of Prism (lower left) that definitely doesn’t resonate with our group as an example of the prevailing injustice in engineering practice.

In our first panel for ESJP 2010, Matthew Harrison talked about the efforts made in the UK to include traditionally non-represented groups such as women in engineering education.

Lisa McLoughlin talked about the tension between abstract knowledge and practical knowledge in engineering education especially as experienced by ”practical” students at a community college. The focus on the abstract knowledge might cause these practical students to feel “lost”. Ways of addressing this include focus on design and problem based learning.

Lisa asked if engineering education should change to accommodate students from non-traditional backgrounds? Her answer is “Yes”. We should at least expand the scope of whom we accommodate.

One question asked then was how do you get a wide range of students? Matthew took a shot at answering that by talking about using real life models in relevant areas.

Matthew argued that some reasons for people from low-socioeconomic background to become engineers are: 1. Money and secure job. 2. Flexible degree.

Lisa added that we should not underestimate the economic motivation from those from low-socioeconomic background. After all, it’s hard to support a family or change the world working at McDonalds.

The conference opened with a short welcome and introduction of the RSA by Matthew Taylor (RSA’s chief executive).

Caroline Baillie, the conference organizer, then dedicated the conference to the memory of Maren Somers.

Then all conference participants in attendance introduced themselves, Caroline gave a short introduction and overview of the history of the ESJP network, and some of the “old timers” shared their stories of how they come to be interested in engineering in relation to social justice and peace issues and came in contact with the ESJP network and how their experience and the network has evolved over the years.

Then we did a short exercise using postcards of William Blake paintings to find our critical friend for the conference, with whom attendees throughout the conference can discuss and reflect on their experience.

Looking forward to seeing you all next week – thanks Usman for setting up the live blogging space which will help us all capture our thoughts as we progress.

I wanted also to suggest everyone tries to come along with an idea of their own personal goal for the meeting – we will be working on these throughout.

Caroline Baillie Chair in Engineering Education Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics University Western Australia 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, Perth, Western Australia

Perth +61864883137 London +442089836121 (GMT+1)

We’ll be liveblogging the ESJP 2010 conference right on this site. If you’d like to know what’s going on at the conference but can’t make it to London, tune in here! We’ll be posting audio recordings and videos from the conference as well.