Fostering Democratic Attitude within Engineering Education

According to the education ideal advocated by Wilhelm von Humboldt, education should be a holistic process to develop the whole human being and should not be narrowed toward job training. For example, in democratic societies, education should be directed to fostering a democratic mindset of students to strengthen pluralistic democracy. It is always possible to introduce a general course into a study program that deals with democratic education from a theoretical point of view. But by introducing such a course, the time spent on technical subjects will be reduced. The other major disadvantage of such solutions is that democratic education is seen to be separated from technical education. But in the contrary, democracy should be included in the whole life as a general way of thinking and cooperation between individuals. Therefore, ideas and lecture experiences are presented in this article on how democratic education can be integrated into all engineering subjects as an elementary educational design concept. Students should be led toward a general democratic attitude by practical application. To achieve this, democratic learning environments can be established in all types of courses like lectures, seminars, and labs. This includes, for example, the design of exercises, the presentation of the theoretical content, and the interaction between professors and students as well as the interaction between the students themselves as induced by the teaching activities. Also in exams, elements to promote democratic thinking are possible: Exams should be not directed to learning only content but toward understanding, creativity, and problem-solving competence. They should include, where possible, the fact that correct technical solutions are not unique but that a multiverse of solutions exists, with each solution featuring various strengths and weaknesses. This not only sensitizes the students for the need for (e.g. socially or environmentally) responsible technical design choices but also allows them to find optimized solutions for the engineering challenges at hand. In sum, lecturers should be aware that a democratic learning environment is a demanding process, as students must be taken as serious partners in a joint learning process and surprises are to be expected.