Beyond Calculations: Engineering Judgment as Epistemic Cognition in Engineering Education
Plain Language Summary
This paper examines engineering judgment: the practical wisdom engineers use to make decisions when formulas and calculations alone are not enough, such as deciding when to trust a model versus their own experience. We argue that engineering education tends to treat this skill as something that develops naturally over time rather than teaching it directly, and propose borrowing ideas from psychology about how people think about knowledge itself (called epistemic cognition/thinking) to give instructors a clearer, more teachable way of understanding and assessing judgment in students.
Contribution
We differentiate engineering judgment from the related psychological constructs of general judgment and critical thinking, then advances epistemic cognition (and specifically the AIR model of epistemic Aims, Ideals, and Reliable processes) as a more precise theoretical lens for conceptualizing, scaffolding, and assessing engineering judgment in undergraduate education.
Research Questions
- How does engineering judgment differ conceptually from related psychological constructs such as general judgment and critical thinking?
- How can epistemic cognition, and the AIR model in particular, provide a more nuanced framework for understanding the cognitive processes underlying engineering judgment?
- How can this epistemic-cognition framing be applied to improve the scaffolding, teaching, and assessment of engineering judgment in undergraduate courses?
Methods
This is a conceptual/theoretical paper that synthesizes literature on engineering judgment (e.g., Gainsburg's ethnographic taxonomy, Weedon's rhetorical-technical framing, Edmondson and Sherratt's tripartite judgment model), critical thinking, and epistemic cognition. We then apply Chinn and Rinehart's AIR model as an organizing framework, and briefly illustrate its utility by referencing an in-progress study in an undergraduate engineering laboratory course in which students complete open-ended design experiments scaffolded around identifying an epistemic aim, ideal, and reliable process for each task.
Key Findings
We argue that engineering judgment, while drawing on general judgment and critical thinking, exceeds both because it must terminate in actionable decisions under real-world constraints, is inherently social and value-laden, and integrates multiple modes of thinking (analytical, experiential, intuitive) beyond individual cognitive skill. We position epistemic cognition — specifically, epistemic dispositions, beliefs, and skills — as the conceptual link explaining why technically competent students can still struggle with judgment-based problems. Early, unreported-in-detail results from their in-progress classroom study suggest AIR-based scaffolding shows promise but that its effectiveness depends heavily on when and how consistently it is introduced across a student's engineering education.
Implications
We call for engineering judgment to be treated as a subject of explicit pedagogical attention rather than an assumed byproduct of technical coursework, with curricula integrating AIR-based scaffolding early and consistently rather than late in a program. Future longitudinal research can trace the co-evolution of students' epistemic cognition and engineering judgment, along with further classroom-based studies testing varied pedagogical approaches for introducing epistemic frameworks.