From Intellectual Development To Expertise

Over the past five years we have conducted a longitudinal study of undergraduate engineering students based on the Perry scheme of intellectual development. [1,2] (For readers not familiar with the Perry scheme, a summary is provided in the Appendix of this paper.) One of the major goals of that study was to determine how our students were developing in their ability to undertake complex problem solving as indicated by their descriptions of the general strategies that they used in attacking ill-defined problems. We are now analyzing the transcripts of the student interviews to search for evidence of their development specifically related to complex problem solving along with the expert knowledge and skills required to support it. Our focus on solving complex problems is driven by the fact that we take this ability as the defining ability of an expert engineer. Thus, in this analysis of the Perry data, we are seeking an indication of the progression of our students towards expert status within their chosen engineering field.