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Scientific and technological research is important to everyone because their results affect humanity worldwide. Although science and technology bring many benefits to humanity, individuals and societies can face the negative consequences of science and technology. To prevent and solve the negative consequences of research in these fields, it is important to educate scientists and engineers to have social responsibility. However, no research has addressed preservice science teachers' views of social responsibility in literature. Therefore, this study aimed to explore Chinese pre-service science teachers' views on the social responsibility of scientists and engineers. The research participants were 194 pre-service science teachers. A social responsibility instrument was administered for data collection. The results showed that participants had high mean scores in five areas of social responsibility and a good awareness of the role of scientists and engineers in addressing problems and risks related to human, environmental, and societal impacts. However, they had lower mean scores in three areas requiring action or involvement. In addition, the results did not show statistical differences by gender or grade level. In light of our findings, we conclude pedagogical and practical implications for teachers and researchers in teaching social responsibility.

This study aimed to develop a STEM module for eighth-grade middle school learners through the engineering design process. The module was developed based on the ADDIE model, primarily concentrating on the stages of analysis, design and development. The study consisted of two main phases: module development and module evaluation. During the development phase, 26 science teachers and 30 eighth-grade middle school pupils were purposefully selected from a public sector middle school in China. Subject themes of the EDP-STEM module were determined by data analysis using coding of responses to interview questions and questionnaires seeking to elicit perceived needs. The EDP-STEM module's learning objectives, engineering design process, and STEM knowledge were subsequently developed. In the evaluation phase, five experts and 50 ninth-grade middle school pupils were recruited to verify the reliability and validity of the EDP-STEM module. The Content Validity Index (CVI) for the EDP-STEM module was 0.92, and the Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient was 0.76. Based on their feedback and suggestions, the researcher made modifications and improvements to the EDP-STEM module. The results of the study showed that EDP-STEM module has good reliability and validity and can be used as a learning module to carry out STEM learning in eighth-grade classrooms.

Alumni can offer authentic perceptions of how university education is relevant to career requirements with direct educational experiences and frontline work experiences. This study captures the experiences of alumni in the engineering field to illuminate the multi-faceted distinctions between the higher education and employment systems. Based on semi-structured interviews and artefact collection, the findings reveal that the university system focuses more on fragmented and theoretical knowledge in course goals, using classical textbooks as the main means of instruction, while the workplace system emphasises the whole picture and application competence, using cutting-edge instruments and project-based approaches to enhance employees' abilities. Students at universities are less incentivised to work hard and collaborate with each other than employees at companies due to different incentive rules and different community milieu. The workplace system also has a better division of labour than universities in cultivating talents. Practical implications are discussed regarding aspects of higher education reform.

Despite the importance of undergraduate research for student learning and development, not enough work has been done to clarify its effects in different disciplinary contexts. Using data from the China College Student Survey, this research adopts Becher and Trowler's theory of discipline classification to understand the relationship between undergraduate research and students' learning outcomes in different disciplines. It indicates that first, contributing to journals/conferences correlates with students' self-reported learning outcomes in Physics, History, and Engineering, but these relationships can be explained by process-centered activities, except in Physics. Second, early-year undergraduates' learning outcomes are relatively weakly related to conducting research with faculty in pure disciplines. By contrast, such relationships are distinct in applied disciplines. Third, in soft disciplines, participating in competitions significantly correlates with more types of students' learning outcomes than conducting research with faculty, while in hard disciplines, they both play quite important roles. It makes recommendations for future research and practice, which enrich insight into how universities can best engage undergraduates in research.

This study examined the extent to which perceived organisational support (POS) predicts career exploration via the mediation effect of career adaptability. Grounded in career construction theory, the study employed an online survey with 611 Chinese undergraduate students. The survey employed POS, career adaptability and career-related exploration scales. Multi-group comparisons explored gender, discipline and place of origin (rural or urban). Although gender and major were moderating variables, there was no significant difference among rural and urban subgroups. There was a direct relationship between POS and career-related exploration via the mediation effect of career adaptability. Male students had higher and statistically significant path coefficients when it came to the relationship between POS and career-related exploration. The effects of POS on career adaptability and career-related exploration differed according to discipline. Humanities and social sciences (HASS) students reported significantly less organisational support than those in science and engineering. POS had negligible influence on career-related exploration among HASS students. The results suggest that assessing students' POS is an important preliminary step within career development learning. Recommendations include early assessment and discussion of students' POS and incorporating the concern, control, curiosity and confidence dimensions of career adaptability into career-related interventions.

This study examined the effects of virtual and physical robots (VPR) using in different learning stages (simple session/complex session) in a robotics programming course. A quasi-experimental design was implemented with 84 junior high school students from two classes. One class with 44 students used combination of VPR strategy for learning, whereas the other class with 42 students used only physical robots (the PR strategy) to learn the same content materials. Results showed that no significant difference was found in the students' learning attitude, programming skills, and learning engagement between VPR and PR, while significant difference existed in engineering design ability and cognitive load, no matter in simple or complex learning sessions. Although the VPR strategy is not always better than the PR one, it has unique advantages on facilitating students' higher-order thinking in solving complex problem, as well as reducing their cognitive load. These findings highlight that VPR is more valuable to the engineering design tasks than PR, and indicate a potential direction in the future to integrate Virtual Reality/Augment Reality into robotics education.

In order to make up for the shortage of scientific research experiments and teaching in land-based engine room laboratory, a simulation system is designed and developed using B/S mode to simulate scientific research experiments, teaching and operation processes, and designed algorithms to simulate the propulsion characteristics of the main propulsion diesel engine. A large number of experiments were carried out, and the relationship curve between output power and fuel consumption rate of the main engine was obtained in the laboratory. Apache JMeter was used to test the pressure of the simulation system deployed in Dalian Maritime University Cloud. It is found that under the test conditions, the average response time of sample request is 330 ms, which is far superior the design standard of 2 s. There is no abnormal response to all requests, and all indicators fully meet the requirements of the project team. The simulation system fills the gap in the application of panoramic interactive technology in Marine engineering education, and provides a reference for the exploration of "intelligent +" experiment and teaching mode in maritime university laboratories.

For students to sustain their learning beyond higher education, it is important for them to develop their evaluative judgement. Although the importance of evaluative judgement is well-established, the process through which students make such judgements remains contested. This study explores students' evaluative judgement process by asking 20 engineering students to evaluate their own intercultural competence and that of other engineers in task-based interviews. The findings reveal that in the process of judgement-making, students negotiate and navigate multiple dimensions, including their 'knowledge of intercultural competence', 'awareness of bias', 'attitude towards development', 'capability to judge', 'action towards improvement' and 'identity as assessor'. Building on these findings, the study further reconceptualises evaluative judgement as a negotiated process rather than a capability.

As BIM (Building information modeling) comprehensive advantages in the field of engineering, it develops rapidly in the international building industry including China. In the face of new technology and new methods of innovation, architecture teaching also needs to adjust. BIM as new design tool is very necessary. But how to perfectly combine BIM with building teaching to make students truly apply is the key point.

This paper regards the mechanical curriculum teaching as a design problem and uses environment-based design (EBD) method to solve it. First, environment components and their relations of the mechanical curriculum are found out by recursive object model (ROM). Then, conflicts in the teaching process are identified by analysing the above relations. Finally, solutions for solving these conflicts are generated. The proposed method is applied to mechanical manufacturing technology foundation (MMTF) curriculum with 217 students in grade 2016 in China. The solutions used in MMTF include decreasing the mental stress of students, developing more experimental projects, applying real cases and projects, adopting variety of assessments and so on. Compared with the performance of students in grade 2015, the average attendance rate and final scores are both increased, and three of the four achievement values of graduation attributes are risen. The practical example illustrates the EBD method is effective in improving curriculum teaching.

It is well-known that engineering is a key profession for both economic and social development. This is as true for China as it is for other countries which are in the process of development. However, what are the economic incentives for young people to enter the profession today? Currently, there are many studies of the rate of return to educational investment, but recent empirical studies of the rate of return to educational investment for engineers are uncommon. This is true generally, but especially for contemporary China. This is because it is difficult to obtain high-quality and representative sample data about engineers. This paper uses the data of the Chinese Family Panel Studies, 2010, and applies a Mincerian income function to estimate the rate of return to education for engineers who work in the private sector in urban China. The empirical results show that the rate of return for engineers is 12.3%, which is an impressive figure. It is in accordance with the current supply and demand of the Chinese labour market which requires many engineers to carry out construction and maintenance projects given China's continuing industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation. However, the empirical results also show that compared with the rate of return to education for professional and technical personnel who are employed in business economics and finance, the rate of return for engineers is significantly lower. This may explain why in China today the attraction of engineering education for talented young people is declining, with more and more students choosing business economics and finance as their first choices of major and career, rather than engineering as in the past.

Research on engineering practice is scarce and sharing of qualitative research data can reduce the effort required for an aspiring researcher to obtain enough data from engineering workplaces to draw generalizable conclusions, both qualitative and quantitative. This paper describes how a large shareable qualitative data set on engineering practices was accumulated from 350 interviews and 12 field studies performed by the principal investigator and by students conducting PhD and capstone research projects. Ethical research practice required that sharing and reuse of qualitative data be considered from the start. The researchers' interests and methods were aligned to maintain sufficient consistency to support subsequent analysis and re-analysis of data. Analysis helped to answer questions of fundamental significance for engineering educators: what do engineers do, and why are the performances of engineering enterprises so different in South Asia compared with similar enterprises in Australia? Analysis also demonstrated the overwhelming significance of technical collaboration in engineering practice. Conceiving engineering practice as a series of technical collaboration performances requires a more elaborate understanding of social interactions than is currently the case in engineering schools. Another finding is that global engineering competency could be better described in terms of "working with people who collaborate differently". Research helped to demonstrate that formal treatment of technical collaboration in an engineering curriculum could help avoid student misconceptions about engineering practice that hinder their subsequent engineering performances.

As a very important skill both in English teaching and learning, reading strategy has been emphasized at home and abroad for a long time. Many scholars and teachers make research on undergraduates of English major or non-English major. However, the postgraduates are often neglected. Actually, it is also imperative to make a study among postgraduates of non-English majors, getting the information of their use of reading strategies and giving some useful suggestions to them. Therefore, this paper makes a quantitative study among 40 postgraduates from College of Mechanical Engineering in Chang'an University. This study shows that postgraduates of non-English major in Chang'an university do not frequently use reading strategies to improve their reading speed and proficiency. And there is a big difference between the successful learners and unsuccessful learners in terms of the use of reading strategies.

3D design software is a commonly used interactive learning tool in STEM education. It is generally believed that 3D design can effectively train students' spatial thinking and engineering design abilities. There have been many theoretical and practical achievements in the application of 3D printing education, but the evaluation of 3D design is mainly based on diagnostic and summative evaluations, which ignores the growth of students' spatial thinking and engineering design ability. Students' creativity and problem-solving abilities are limited, while teachers have not been able to teach students in accordance with their aptitude. In this study, we propose a 3D printing course data collection model based on xAPI specifications, and use GeekCAD design software to implement the xAPI profile and apply it to the 3D printing course. The successful implementation of this model at Li Jun primary school proved that xAPI can completely record the learning paths of students. Through the analysis of interactive data, we found that students have different operating habits and learning paths which provide the basis for the evaluation of students' spatial thinking ability and engineering design skill in interactive learning environment.

With the increasing attention to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), hands-on Curriculum Practical Training (CPT) has been expanding rapidly worldwide as a requirement of the undergraduate engineering education. In China, a typical CPT for undergraduate engineering students requires several weeks of hands-on training in the industry. So far the evidence on the effect of CPT is inconclusive for education researchers and policy makers. Employing a dataset collected from China in 2013, this study endeavors to identify the effect of CPT on engineering students' career development in China. This research uses two outcome variables to gauge work place outcomes: "earnings" and "productivity." With the Propensity Score Matching approach, this study shows several results: (1) most engineers benefit from their CPT and value this hands-on training experience; (2) without matching, CPT has a statistically significant positive contribution to future earnings. However, the significant effect vanishes after matching; (3) CPT was a significant positive determinant of productivity with and without matching; and (4) the effect of CPT was heterogeneous depending on personal characteristics.

Responding to globalization trends, many engineering schools are internationalizing their courses and curricula to prepare graduates for careers that involve working across countries and cultures. As a result, both students and staff are looking beyond study abroad to international work, research, and service learning opportunities as alternate pathways for high-impact experiential learning in global context. However, such programs can also pose unique challenges related to preparing students for professional practice abroad and systematically evaluating program outcomes and impacts among students and other stakeholders. This paper responds to these challenges by reporting on International Research and Education in Engineering (IREE) 2010 China, a summer engineering research abroad program. It describes orientation strategies designed to improve student readiness for global practice, and presents mixed-method assessment methods and results for global engineering competency and other key learning outcomes. The main audience for this paper includes faculty and staff who develop and support global learning experiences in engineering and other professional degree programs.

Contribution: This paper qualitative research delineates the thinking and behavioral patterns that reflect students' advanced level of epistemological thinking in project-based learning (PBL) activities and the associated impact factors. Background: PBL has been widely adopted in engineering education for its effectiveness in improving students' problem-solving abilities, collaboration skills, and academic achievement. The four stages of Perry's theory--Dualism, Multiplicity, Relativism, and Commitment (within Relativism)--depict students' epistemological development from dualistic to contextual relativistic thinking. Prior research suggested that participation in PBL could benefit students' development to relativistic thinking--the most revolutionary change in Perry's model. Nevertheless, how epistemological thinking was exhibited in the context of PBL, and the relationship between students' epistemological thinking and PBL learning activities both remain unclear. Research Questions: 1) What are demonstrations of students' relativistic thinking in PBL activities? and 2) What are the factors in regard to students' relativistic thinking in PBL activities? Methodology: Built upon quantitative results obtained using a modified Zhang's cognitive development inventory (ZCDI) developed in the context of Perry's theory, this paper explored demonstrations of students' relativistic thinking in PBL in a qualitative manner, and analyzed the associated factors based upon one-on-one interviews with 17 engineering students. Findings: In PBL activities, students' epistemological thinking is reflected in their solving problems within constraints, conducting feasibility analyses, exhibiting commercial awareness, having their thinking broadened, and more. Their epistemological thinking can be impacted by factors, such as guidance from professors, collaborations with peers, communications with other stakeholders, and complexity level of projects.

The aim of this study was to develop a scale to measure students' STEM continuing motivation (CM). In accordance with the conceptualisation of CM by Maehr (1976. Continuing motivation: An analysis of a seldom considered educational outcome. "Review of Educational Research," 46(3), 443-462. doi:10.3102/00346543046003443), we define STEM CM as students' tendencies to actively engage in STEM-related activities. The STEM Continuing Motivation Scale was developed from a literature review and student cognitive interviews, and was validated on a sample of 465 Chinese 7th and 8th graders. The results demonstrated that the developed scale had high reliability (Cronbach's a = 0.91) and good validity. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that boys had significantly higher STEM CM than girls and there were significant differences in engineering CM among students from different schools. The implications of the findings of this study are also discussed.

Considering that the course group regarding theory and design of mechanisms is characterized by strong engineering application background and the students generally feel very boring and tedious during the learning process, some teaching reforms for the theory and design of mechanisms are carried out to improve the teaching effectiveness in this paper. Taking the engineering cases as the teaching objectives, we combine the course contents with the engineering background. Moreover, in order to help the students understand the knowledge difficulty and improve the design capacity of the mechanisms and machines, the MATLAB technology is introduced into the theoretical teaching to provide assisted analysis. At the same time, the MATLAB is also introduced into the practical teaching to provide theoretical guidance. The teaching effect shows that MATLAB-based teaching reform under the engineering application can deepen the understandings of course contents for students, improve the interest in learning, strengthen the design capacity and develop the innovation ability.

This paper gives a brief analysis on the educational advantages and objects of NCWU. It believes that the educational philosophy and development direction of foreign school in engineering colleges must be set up on the basis of need of China and talents need, moreover, the development of the School of Foreign Studies must be analyzed by integrating into the whole development of NCWU. This paper put forwards the educational philosophy of "Drawing on Advantages, Avoiding Disadvantages, and Gearing Education to Society" and the Development Direction of "Rooted in Foreign Language and Characterised by Engineering and Business". It analyzes the problem of school of foreign studies in NCWU in Specialty Construction, teaching team and Construction of Discipline and puts forwards some solutions.

Practical teaching plays an important role in developing students' practical and innovative abilities. Starting from the idea of "emphasis on practice and ability", this article proposes to take a series of measures to improve students' practical ability in undergraduate teaching. In addition, a platform should be built to develop students' innovative abilities. Our practice has shown that these measures have taken favorable effects.

Gender differences in science and engineering (S&E) have been studied in various countries. Most of these studies find that women are underrepresented in the S&E workforce and publish less than their male peers. The factors that contribute to gender differences in experience and performance in S&E careers can vary from one country to another, yet they remain underexplored. This paper is among the first to systematically compare gender differences in the publication productivity of academic scientists and engineers with doctoral degrees in the U.S. and China. Findings from negative binomial regressions show that women publish less than their male counterparts in science but not in engineering in the U.S. In China, women do not differ from men in publication productivity in science but publish more than their male counterparts in engineering. In addition, we find that some background variables affect men's and women's publication productivity differently. The findings are analyzed in the context of the different cultures of the two fields (science vs. engineering) and of the two countries (the U.S. and China). Limitations and policy implications are also discussed.

Online collaborative writing tools provide an efficient way to complete a writing task. However, existing tools only focus on technological affordances and ignore the importance of social affordances in a collaborative learning environment. This article describes a learning analytic system that analyzes writing behaviors, and creates visualizations incorporating individual engagement awareness and group ranking awareness (social affordance), and review writing behaviour history (technological affordance), to support student engagement. Studies examined the performance of the system used by university students in two collaborative writing activities: collaboratively writing a project proposal (N = 41) and writing tutorial discussion answers (N = 25). Results show that students agreed with what the visualization conveys and visualizations enhance their engagement in a collaborative writing activity. In addition, students stated that the visualizations were useful to help them reflect on the writing process and support the assessment of individual contributions.

Practical abilities are important for students from majors including Computer Science and Engineering, and Electrical Engineering. Along with the popularity of ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM/ICPC) and other programming contests, online judge (OJ) websites achieve rapid development, thus providing a new kind of programming practice, i.e. online practice. Due to fair and timely feedback results from OJ websites, online practice outperforms traditional programming practice. In order to promote students' practical abilities in programming and algorithm designing, this article presents a novel teaching idea, online judge & practice oriented teaching (OJPOT). OJPOT is applied to "Programming Foundation" course. OJPOT cultivates students' practical abilities through various kinds of programming practice, such as programming contests, online practice and course project. To verify the effectiveness of this novel teaching idea, this study conducts empirical research. The experimental results show that OJPOT works effectively in enhancing students' practical abilities compared with the traditional teaching idea.

Design experiment refers to that designed and conducted by students independently and is surely an important method to cultivate students' comprehensive quality. According to the development and requirements of experimental teaching, this article carries out a study and analysis on the purpose, significance, denotation, connotation and characteristics of design experiment and then elaborates on the general design methods and specific steps in this kind of experiment. By practicing in design experiment, students will have their abilities in innovation and scientific research as well as comprehensive engineering diathesis improved.

A case study of project-based learning (PBL) implemented in Tianjin University of Technology and Education is presented. This multidiscipline project is innovated to meet the novel requirements of industry while keeping its traditional effectiveness in driving students to apply knowledge to practice and problem-solving. The implementation of PBL is described with emphasis in relation to the ability cultivation. The feedback from students shows positive support for the innovations.

A huge increase in engineering graduates from the BRIC countries in recent decades potentially threatens the competitiveness of developed countries in producing high value-added products and services, while also holding great promise for substantially increasing the level of global basic and applied innovation. The key question is whether the quality of these new BRIC engineers will be high enough to actualize this potential. The objective of our study is to assess the evolving capacity of BRIC higher education systems to produce qualified engineering graduates. To meet this objective, we compare developments in the quality of undergraduate engineering programs across elite and non-elite higher education tiers within and across each BRIC country. To assess and compare the quality of engineering education across the BRIC countries, we use multiple sources of primary and secondary data gathered from each BRIC country from 2008 to 2011. In combination with this, we utilize a production function approach that focuses on key input-, process- and outcome-based indicators associated with the quality of education programs. Our analysis suggests that in all four countries, a minority of engineering students receives high quality training in elite institutions while the majority of students receive low quality training in non-elite institutions. Our analysis also shows how the BRIC countries vary in their capacity to improve the quality of engineering education.

This paper describes the development of an aero control experiment apparatus (ACEA) for use in aerospace control practical courses. The ACEA incorporates a systematic multihierarchy learning and teaching method, and was designed to improve aerospace engineering students' understanding of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control systems. It offers a number of standard experimental modules at three levels: component, system, and simulation and evaluation. The software and hardware design methods used in the modules were chosen to allow students to conduct experiments in a simple, more hands-on manner. As a result, they were able to select or reconfigure their experiments and so continuously improve their skills and extend the ACEA itself. The practical curriculum module-s-grouped in three skill levels of basic experiments, case study, and independent design--were applied in a 3-year M.Sc. course, UAV Control Systems. The marking criteria created to evaluate students' achievements are presented, along with some results of this evaluation.

Harnessing energy from the tides is a much-promoted but rarely realised way of generating electricity. This article examines some of the systems that are currently in use or under development, and outlines their economic, environmental and technical implications.

Purpose: This paper aims to discuss the challenge for the classical idea of professionalism in understanding the Chinese software engineering industry after giving a close insight into the development of this industry as well as individual engineers with a psycho-societal perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The study starts with the general review of the sociological concept of profession, professional and specialization of knowledge. Together with revealing the critical challenge from the empirical field of software engineering industry regarding its professionalization, a critique of the neglect of subjective agency in classical conception of professionalism in sociology theory and methodology is set out. Findings: A case study with interpretation of the subject's continuously developing identification with their specialization in knowledge and occupation from their narration of career experience reveals the dynamics in this development process relating to individual, social practice and societal factors. Originality/value: This paper contributes to empirical research of analyzing the professionalization process of software engineering and software engineers in relation to the concept of professionalism, and it contributes theoretically by discussing the challenge of this process to the development of professionalism within this highly knowledge-based industry in a Chinese societal context. (Contains 6 figures and 2 notes.)

Purpose: This article aims to analyze emergent learning practices for globalizing work through two research questions: "What are the conceptualizations of work represented by the Virtual Factory and how do they mediate globalizing work?" and "What is the potential of expansive learning efforts to expand conceptualizations towards the emergent learning practices of globalizing work?". Design/methodology/approach: Cultural-historical activity theory is applied, specifically the historical tool-mediated activity, concept formation and the zone of proximal development. A dynamic hierarchy of conceptualizations forms the framework for expansive learning efforts. Data were gathered by ethnographic and development interventionist methods from a distributed engineering design project. Findings: The paper finds that, historically, multi-layered conceptualizations of work face developmental challenges in globalizing work. Expansive learning efforts enhance the emergent learning practices when orienting global participants to motivating "why" and "where-to" conceptualizations. In order to turn emergent practices into sustainable learning practices, material representations need to be created to mediate the bottom-up and top-down conceptualizations at the interfaces of distributed work. Research limitations/implications: Emergent learning practices are studied longitudinally through concrete work in transformation. The learning approach emphasizes developmental interventions at global workplaces. Practical implications: Expansive learning efforts at different levels of conceptualization, may be supported by tools that mediate and sustain emergent learning practices. Social implications: Global workplace learning should be a concern of those involved with corporate social responsibility. Originality/value: Emergent learning practices offers a new approach for studies of globalizing work through its multi-layered conceptualizations of work. (Contains 3 figures and 4 tables.)

Purpose: The paper aims to explore the emotion learning experiences of some Chinese immigrants in Canadian engineering workplaces. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on life history style interviews with 14 Chinese immigrant engineers and 14 key informant interviews. Findings: Research respondents constructed a competitive, masculine, and individualistic engineering "culture" in Canada, where the emotional and the relational, supposedly central to the Asian and Chinese culture, are largely devalued. To fit into the individualistic culture, some Chinese immigrants learned to change their patterns of socialization and some became hard-nosed competitors. To ameliorate the deleterious effects of the alienating workplace environments, some resorted to their cultural teaching to maintain emotional health; some also tried to build collegiality and collectivity to humanize their work settings. Research limitations/implications: The study was not a comprehensive study of the emotion work in engineering workplaces. It does not capture the emotional order that may as well exist to afford different people differential negotiation power in the engineering culture. Social implications: The study suggests that while emotional connection and personalized relationship are "culturally" discouraged in engineering workplaces, they are of significant use value for immigrant workers and should be addressed to create humanized work environments. Originality/value: This is one of the few articles that examine emotion learning at the intersection of gender, race and class relations. (Contains 1 note.)

Developing nations including Bangladesh are significantly lagging behind the millennium development target due to the lack of science, technology and engineering education. Bangladesh as a least developing country has only 44 engineers per million people. Its technological education and gross domestic product growth are not collinear. Although limited progress was made in humanities, basic sciences, agriculture and medical sciences, a vast gap is left in technical and engineering education. This paper describes the present condition of engineering education in the country and explores ways to improve engineering education in order to meet the national as well as global skills demand. (Contains 3 tables and 7 figures.)

Engineering education has been well implemented in the majority of developed countries such as the USA, Germany, and the United Kingdom so that the gap between engineering science and engineering practice is greatly bridged. However, in China, the gap still exists, and some attempts by Chinese government, even though having made obvious progress, are not very satisfactory yet. Thus, the research on feasible engineering education strategy has drawn our pressing concerns. Based on the analyses of participants' motivation and value chain, an evolutionary model of institute-industry interoperation is proposed, which includes isolated stage, orienting stage, interacting stage, interoperating stage, and convergence stage. The case of one school of software in China is analyzed to support and clarify this model. This institute-industry interoperation model is showing considerable vitality in the development of engineering education, and it can present reference value not only to China but to other countries as well.

In May 2008, the worst earthquake in more than three decades struck southwest China, killing more than 80,000 people. The complexity of this earthquake makes it an ideal case study to clarify the intertwined issues of ethics in engineering and to help cultivate critical thinking skills. This paper first explores the need to encourage engineering ethics within a cross-cultural context. Next, it presents a systematic model for designing an engineering ethics curriculum based on moral development theory and ethic dilemma analysis. Quantitative and qualitative data from students' oral and written work were collected and analysed to determine directions for improvement. The paper also presents results of an assessment of this interdisciplinary engineering ethics course. This investigation of a disaster is limited strictly to engineering ethics education; it is not intended to assign blame, but rather to spark debate about ethical issues. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

The authors used holistic and structured interviews to examine Chinese student perspectives on their own spatial ability. The results of this study were compared and contrast with a previous study that was conducted by Mohler (2008) of Caucasian student perspectives in United States. Findings of the current study agree with other literature that Chinese student spatial ability may be culturally formed. Their background, experiences, and upbringing may contribute to Chinese student development of spatial ability and appear to differ significantly from students in United States. Recommendations and educational implications are discussed in the following contribution. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper describes the research and practice on the reforming of the examination method of engineering graphics at Zhejiang University. Based on the theory of standardizing general examinations and emphasizing key examinations, a new combined examination method of multiple modes has been explored and practised. The examination modes include unified large-scale examination mode, interviewing mode, additional score mode by designing an object or writing a paper, and do-it-yourself mode, i.e. self-questioning, self-answering and self-evaluating. The method forms a good synergy between unified large-scale examination and free exertion. The final percentage score is given on the basis of the assessment mode reform. (Contains 3 tables.)