The existing literature suggests a mismatch between what and how engineering and technology students are learning in the classroom and what employers and society in general are demanding from them in their careers. This mismatch between engineering learning and practice is rooted in a fundamental dissonance between what technology is and how it is taught; engineering and technology education programs continue to portray engineering through building the curricula and infrastructure upon the notion that engineering is more of a platform for conceptual understanding than a complex and contextualized practice of solving problems, achieving sustainable design, and/or employing creative skills, such as design. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a model that conceptualizes engineering as a complex and contextualized activity and to consequently argue for a new positioning of the role of conceptual understanding. First, this chapter briefly discusses the existing prevalent model of technology and engineering that focuses on the attainment of conceptual knowledge, giving primarily attention to its main assumptions, limitations, and implications in the context of engineering/ technology education and practice. Then, the discussion proceeds to some precursor frameworks of the proposed model that already exist in a more fragmented form, including frameworks developed in the form of theoretically derived rationales, as well as those models that have drawn from naturalistic approaches of inquiry. Finally, this new model of engineering and technology is introduced as a complex and contextualized practice along with its main tenets, how it reframes the fundamental questions of technology and engineering and technology/engineering practice, and the possible implications for technology/engineering education and practice. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.
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