Tackling the research-to-teaching challenge in engineering design education

Translating research results into everyday teaching practice is notoriously difficult. In this paper, we focus on the growing body of research on design knowing and learning, and examine and make visible opportunities for getting this research to positively impact teaching in engineering design education. Core to the paper is the position that successful efforts to get research to impact teaching will involve an emphasis on educators and their teaching practice. In this paper, we situate our position in scholarly thinking concerning the research-to-teaching challenge, present results of an empirical analysis of current teaching practice in design education, and describe an on-going approach for supporting research into teaching that follows from the empirical results. We close with the observation that information on the decision making strategies of engineering design educators could be particularly helpful for getting research to affect teaching practice in engineering design education.

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