Using Soft Systems Thinking to Confront the Politics of Innovation in Engineering Education

Engineering curriculum innovators face a range of formidable barriers which, singly or in combination, have thwarted countless attempts at sustainable curricular quality improvement initiatives regardless, of their educational efficacy. The often ignored elephant in the room of programmatic quality improvement is the politics of change. The essential point of this chapter is this: a whole-of-programme curriculum innovation demands an intervention strategy capable of effectively responding to multiple stakeholder perspectives and therefore to the politics of change. It is argued that Soft Systems Methodology embedded within a Systemic Action Research approach will give engineering educators that capability.

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