Essential skills for the 21st-century engineer

Shahid Anwar

In redefining the relationship between skills and employment, economists have been emphasising the urgency of teaching essential non-technical skills or 21st-century skills. The current engineering curriculum, however, is congested with technical subjects, leaving almost no scope to add non-technical subjects. Researchers have identified that non-technical skills can be developed by adopting different teaching methods. The aim of this study was to identify the teaching methods that the engineering faculty in Pakistan currently employs and identify teaching methods that would be helpful in developing the essential non-technical skills or 21st-century skills of engineering students. The thesis discusses a brief history of learning and its associated theory (pedagogy and andragogy) and the historical journey from basic skills to 21st-century skills from an engineering perspective and identifies the skills that define engineering competency standards. Existing frameworks for 21st-century skills were reviewed and a framework was designed that was suitable for developing the 21st-century skills of engineers and aligned with the engineering regulatory bodies’ graduate attributes. 21-st century skills were mapped against effective teaching methods and different strategies that could be helpful in developing non-technical skills in engineering students. In this grounded theory qualitative research study, the recruitment technique of snowball sampling was adopted and semi-structured interviews with nine engineering faculty members with varying years of teaching experience were conducted. The study’s findings revealed that Pakistani universities currently have no policies for developing the non-technical skills of engineering students and that there is considerable resistance from faculty members to adopt new teaching methods. To encourage universities and faculty members to adopt new teaching methods, a four-phase professional development program grounded in a community of practice and using a two-pronged strategy was proposed; a top-down approach involving regulatory bodies and a bottom-up approach using change agents.

Essential skills for the 21st-century engineer

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