Thinking like an engineer: using engineering habits of mind to redesign engineering education for global competitiveness.

If we want to ensure that young engineers are ready to meet the challenges of the future and can operate in a global environment, we need to know how successful engineers think and act when faced with challenging problems. Once we have identified these distinctive engineering ‘habits of mind’ (EHoM) we can then suggest how the education and training system might be re-designed to ensure the cultivation of these EHoM in school, college and university. Funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering, our research found that there was considerable agreement about the six habits of mind that engineers use most frequently when engaged in the core activity of ‘making’ things or ‘making things work better’. As a result of these findings, we suggest that active teaching approaches, such as PBL or CDIO, although helpful, can in themselves only take the learner so far. However, if the curriculum overtly articulates EHoM as an outcome of learning and if teachers provide students with opportunities to develop and practice them at all levels of the education system, more successful engineering learning will occur.