Educational paradigms and engineering educators in South Africa

In this response to Waghid (2000) the authorsquestion the validity of conclusions reachedfrom an examination of the proceedings of anengineering education conference in SouthAfrica. The authors argue that these papersdo not represent the views of engineeringeducators in general. Furthermore they querythe way in which Waghid uses reference toteaching methods in these papers to deduce thetheoretical perspective of the presenters. Itis suggested that the views of the educatorsinvolved in this conference and others like itin South Africa, can be characterised asfalling within a broad interpretivist(constructivist) perspective. Finally, theauthors agree that an engagement with acritical perspective would contributesignificantly to the transformation of theculture of engineering education in SouthAfrica.