Turning Engineering Green: Sustainable Development and Engineering Education

Since the 1970s, the relations between engineering and development have changed significantly. On the one hand, at a discursive or macro level, there has been a shift in regard to the kind of development to which engineering is meant to contribute, from furthering economic growth to an approach to development that is “sustainable” in one way or another. On the other hand, on a practitioner, or micro level, there has been a change in the kinds of competence that engineers are expected to have in order to be able to contribute to development, due to the emergence of new fields of “technoscience” blurring the boundaries between what was previously considered science and what was previously considered technology. Finally, in between, at an institutional or meso level, there have been significant changes in how engineering work and engineering education are organized. This chapter attempts to provide an overview of these changing relations between engineering and development and distinguishes between three ideal-typical educational responses: a technical, market-oriented approach; a scientific, academic-oriented approach; and a hybrid, socially oriented approach.