Cultivating engineers' humanity: Fostering cosmopolitanism in a Technical University

This paper aims to explore the potential of a curriculum designed to develop Nussbaum's cosmopolitan abilities through two elective subjects offered to future engineers in a Spanish Technical University. To this end, Nussbaum's proposition of cosmopolitan abilities is presented in relation to the broader academic literature on cosmopolitanism and higher education. From this perspective, the origin, context and pedagogical rationale of the curriculum are described including the discussion of an exploratory study based on discourse analysis and how it has informed our pedagogical practice. Finally we argue for the importance of electives that develop cosmopolitan values for students of technical programmes in Higher Education and the need to consider the implications of their cessation as a consequence of the Bologna Process. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.