Work in Progress: Ways of Thinking of Interdisciplinary Collaborators

Numerous calls by prominent organizations have been made to transform engineering education related research by adopting new ways of thinking. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER) offers a framework, Sustainability Education Framework for Teachers (SEFT). The SEFT offers a networked approach for considering complex problems and solutions through four ways of thinking including futures, values, systems, and strategic thinking. This paper attempts to leverage the work done within ESER by adapting the SEFT for engineering education research (EER) in the context of interdisciplinary collaborations between engineering and education faculty. Three engineering-education collaborators were interviewed in dyads to understand conceptualizations of futures, values, systems, and strategic thinking in relation to their joint research project(s). All three dyads provided specific examples of different ways of thinking from their shared research efforts. Preliminary findings suggest that a ‘ways of thinking’ framework could provide a useful guideline for engineering and education faculty planning to collaborate for interdisciplinary research as well as the overall EER community.