“Being is not knowing”: Cautionary discourse on reflexive sensemaking in engineering education

Background

The relationship between ontology (i.e., being) and epistemology (i.e., knowing) holds importance for engineering education instruction and research in at least three ways: classroom pedagogy (i.e., theory and practice of learning), researcher positionality, and research methodology. Delineating this relationship seems particularly relevant in a time when the construct of identity politics is prominent in US discourse.

Purpose

I discuss the role and importance of theory, affirm the usefulness of our experiences as data, and insist we maximize the usefulness of that data by competently articulating its sociological significance.

Method

The guiding question for this editorial is: To what extent can one's personal experiences be a source of knowledge?

Conclusions

I urge our academic community to accentuate the imperative for making connections between experiential data and theory in order that the conclusions we draw will help us address core issues in engineering teaching, research, and professional practice. The prominence of experiential knowledge—whether researchers telling their own stories or the narratives we gather from participants during interviews—requires that we consider the extent to which we are relaying information versus analyzing and interpreting information.